to his father, my
brother, that's lying far frae his kith and kin in the field of
Malplaquet. Let this be a warning to ye, Hamish, for this morning ye
were looking lamentable," says he, "just lamentable."

CHAPTER V.

MIRREN STUART'S ERRAND.

The shame of my first night's ploy at the Turf Inn lay heavy on me for
a while, and then I would be thinking of the swarthy crew with their
knives and their fierce oaths at the cards, of the spluttering glowing
fire and the old men of the glens in the glow of it, and when I heard
the wind moan and cry in the planting in the night, I longed to hear
the old dread stories of a people long dead who had raised great stones
on our wind-swept moors, and marked their heroes' resting-places with
cairns.

Something of this I told to Dan as we gathered in the sheep from the
far hills on the day before the big storm. I mind it fine, the grey
heavy sky, the bursts of wind that rose ever and anon in the hills, and
died away with an eerie cry, and made me think that all the winds had
word to gather somewhere, and were hastening to the feast like corbies
to a dying ewe.

There was the smell of snow in the air, and the moss pools were frozen
hard, and beautiful it was to see the stag-horn moss entombed in the
clear ice, and the wee water-plants, pale and cold and pitiful, at the
bottom of the pools. Round the far marches we gathered--the wild shy
wethers, seeing the dogs, paused as if to question the right of the
intruders, and then bounded away like goats, and in my mind's eye I see
yet the whitey-yellow wool where the wind ruffled the fleeces. Dan was
very quiet that day, speaking seldom except to the dogs.

"There's something no canny coming, Hamish," said he; "I feel it in my
banes. We're but puir craturs when a's said and done. A pig can see
the wind, and there's them that can hear the grass growing, but a man
just breenges on, blin', blin', and fou o' pride."

And again, "Ye've a terrible hankerin' for bawkins,[1] Hamish. I
whiles think ye will be some old Druid priest come back that's
forgotten the word o' power, but kens dimly in his mind that the white
glistening berries o' the oak and the old standing stanes are freens.
Ye're no feart o' bawkins, and ye're never tired o' hearing about them.
Aweel, it's a kind o' bravery I envy ye, for weel I mind that first
time I heard the Black Hound o' Nourn bay. I can feel the tingle of
fear run in my bones yet when I think o' t