s Man
and his brindled hunter, till my hair was like to rise on my head, and
I would feel it in my legs to be running, but that I kent my folk, dead
and gone, would be laughing at me, in their own place, for our past
folk are not so much dead as just away, and maybe watching; and maybe I
would be comforting myself with the thought that the Killer would be
dead long syne in the course of nature--he and his great dog--but for
all that I had a twig of rowan in my hand, for the night was not canny.
And there came a kind of lifting of my spirit when I got the glint of
the lights of the Big House, and kent there would be folks to be
talking to and dogs to give a man heart.

When I was come to the stable door, there was old Tam, thrang with his
bottles of straw for the horses' last bite (a thing to bring a man to
himself it is to listen to horse beasts riving at straw and crunching
into turnips), but Tam laid down his bundle and came close to me.

"There was a man here," says he, "in the gloaming after you would be
leaving for your ceilidhing, and he would be giving me a _festner_,"
says he, with a toothless grin and his old eyes gleaming; "ay, a noble
_festner_," says he, "_from the bottle_. He would be wanting speech
with you."

"Whatna man was he?" said I.

"A red-faced man and very clean," says he, "and his face shining like a
wean's. Och, he might be wan of the Elect but for the glint in the
eyes o' him and free wi' the bottle--a great _performer_ with the
bottle."

"Would he be leaving any word?" said I, for I would be wearying to come
at the man's business.

"He kind o' let on tae some knowledge o' a place McEilin's Locker or
that," says Tam. "Ye would be expected there the night. I am minding
he would be calling himself McNeilage--the mother o' him was Sassenach."

"Would he be speaking o' the _Gull_?" said I.

"No, man, but a party told me," said the old rascal, "a party told me
that the skiffs were below Bealach an sgadan before the moon was up,
and Tam is thinking that there will be some fine, fine water on the
mainland side before the morning--afore the more-nin," says he.

There was a strange thumping at my ribs when I had the garron at the
door, and would be tramping the long yellow straw from his forefeet,
and I led him out of the yard and we were on the shoulder of the black
hill when the moon was beginning to go down. And now there were no
thoughts of ghosts or bawkins in my head, and I would b