t are unfreens o' mine."

"Alaister Jock has weans enough to do without the dogs," says Ronny,
"for dogs are unchancy beasts in the smuggling nights, and Alaister
himsel' will be always up wi' the drake's dridd."

In a little time Ronny came back to us, and we made our way into
Alastair's house, a place where a grown man could stand broad-soled on
the clay floor and touch the rafters of the roof with the flat of his
palms. The peat fire was smouldering on the floor, and the reek made
its way out at the rigging. Alastair himself, a tall stooped man with
a red beard and a thin beak of a nose, brought peats and threw them on
the fire.

"There was one came for you in the night yesterday," says he to Dan in
his very proper polite way. "I would not be having her in my house at
all, for I am a reeleegious man with a family to rear before the Lord.
I put her into the byre with the kye, for she is of the land of Egypt,
the house of bondage; and my wife sprinkled a little meal and a little
saut over the rumps of the kye to keep away her spells, for we must
meet spell with spell--not that I will be believing in these evil-doers
of the Black Art."

"Och, I kent, I kent," cried Dan, long before Alastair had done with
his speaking, and disappeared through a door which gave me a glimpse of
a cow's head looking over its biss, and it struck me that the byre was
the handy place to get at in Loch Ranza. Ronny and Alastair were
thrang at the talking, with the farmer laying off with his hands, and
wagging his head like a minister in the pulpit, and all in a voice so
raised in tone that I believed from hearing him what our folks say,
that when two farmers are ploughing at the north end they can talk
comfortably across three fields, and they are great at the handling of
their skiffs and bold sailors. I heard Dan--

"Och, my lass, my ain lass; it went sair against my heart to be leaving
without seein' you at all."

I heard her brave voice with a crooning quiver like a mother's.

"I ran, I ran all the long road, for I kent it all from the first o'
it," and in the dimness of the byre I could see these two clinging to
each other.

"Is it the sight[1] ye think ye have now, my droll dark lass?" says
Dan, looking down at her, one arm holding her away from him and the
great love in his eyes.

"There's whiles I come near to hating you when you will be talking like
that," said the swarthy girl. "Mirren Stuart brought me word."

"You'