er at five in the morning, and there was the last of a
moon showing the darkness on the shore and throwing a gleam on the sea.

There were folk moving on the beach, all silently except maybe you
would be hearing a sech of a breath, as when a man will be stretching
himself after resting from a load. There would come now and then the
howling of a dog, an eerie sound, and then he would be at the barking a
long way through the night. Sometimes a little horse would come out of
the darkness with a pack-load on his back, and men would be lifting the
load and laying it on the beach, and there would be quiet whispering,
and the little horse be led away and swallowed up in the dark among the
scrog and bushes. And in a while there came the soft noise of muffled
oars, a sound very faint that will be stirring the blood of a man, and
a little knot of folk gathered round the barrels on the beach.

"That will be the boats now," said Dan McBride.

"It will be all quiet," said Ronald McKinnon, "and Gilchrist will not
be having his new hoose yet for a wee."

And Gilchrist--if Ronny had only kent--Gilchrist and his men shifted a
little among the bushes, and old Dol Beag was there among them
trembling a little and his mouth praying.

John McCook came close to Bryde McBride, and pointed to the very place
where the gangers were lying waiting.

"Would there be something moving there among the bushes?" said he.

"A sheep maybe," said Bryde.

"I am wishing I had the dogs with me," said John.

There were silent figures of women, with shawls tight about their
shoulders, and they looked a little fearfully to the dark places.

Margaret was in her first sleep and dreaming, and it was a daft dream,
and her lips curled softly and parted a little, for in her dreams Bryde
would be knocking and knocking at her door.

"I am just thinking this," she was saying to her dreaming self,
"because he would be tormenting me to be kissing him again," and she
opened her arms and her lips pouted, and then again came the knocking,
low at the first of it, and then growing louder, until at last she
became broad awake, and there would be only a little moonlight in her
room.

"Who is it?" she said, standing a little fearfully behind her door, and
her heart beating.

"Let me in; oh, let me in," she could hear a woman's voice, and opened
the door, and a lass flung herself inside.

"He will be away to the smuggling, mistress," cried the lass, "and I
will b