le came back to us.

"A brave lad, Hamish," says Dan; "he'll have listened to a' the ghost
and bogle and bawkin stories since he could creep, and yet he'll
whistle himsel' safe ower the hill and be too proud tae run, an' I'm
thinkin' every muircock that craws, and every whaup that cries, out on
the peat-hags, will be a bogle in his childish mind."

"There's truth in that," said I, "and I wish I could be hearin' the
stories, for you have not the way o' telling them. Ye will not be
believing them."

"Come ye raikin' wi' me the night and maybe ye'll be hearing some o'
them," says Dan, and so when the horses were bedded and the kye
fothered, we slipped through the planting and took the old peat road
for it, and that I was to hear stories was all that he would tell me.

We came out on the old road to the cove, and rough enough passage we
made, for a hill burn that crossed the bare rock o' the road had frozen
and melted and frozen again, so that on the worst o' the hill we took
our hands and knees for it, and even that comedown to a hillman was
better than breaking our necks over the rocks on the low side, for the
track was whiles no more than a scratch along a precipice.

When we came on to good heather again Dan stopped me.

"Bide a wee, bide a wee, James," and he took a step from me, and there
came at my very ear the lone night-cry of a gull, so weird and
melancholy a sound, that but for a low laugh beside me again I would
have sworn the bird had passed in the darkness.

"Listen," says he; "I startled ye first with your Christian name, and
ye were so made up wi' it, ye wid believe a gull brushed your lug; but
listen, Hamish, listen."

From out of the night came the answer, and in my mind there came the
picture I had often watched, the grey night seas and the lonely gull
flying low, and ever and anon voicing its cry as though it mourned the
lost spirit of the deep.

"There's just the two roads, you see, the shore road and the hill road,
and a strange foot carries far, and there's aye a lad on the watch when
the 'turf's in.'"

So that was Wee Neil's message; McGilp and his crew would be ashore, as
many as could be spared from the schooner, and we were making for the
Turf Inn, and as we travelled I asked why it came to be called that.
"It's a long story," said Dan, "but maybe ye'll have noticed a hole in
a smiddy wall, where they will be throwing out the ashes. Well, in
this lonely place here, there werena many