he dogs leaving me alane in
that unchancey wood, and that devil beast near me in the dark."

By this time we were at Bothanairidh, maybe a heather mile from
Craignaghor, the flock heading quietly in and the dogs at heel, and at
a bare hawthorn tree Dan stopped.

"An' this, Hamish, will be another o' your freens," said he. "There's
many a lilting laugh hidden in the ears o' this old tree, for here it
was the cailleachs cam' tae spin in the long summer forenights, when
everybody left their hames and took their beasts tae the hill for the
summer. There were no dykes or hedges in those days, and the beasts
had to be herded on the hill if the crops were to come to anything.
Aweel, the men a' went to the fishing and a' the weemen stayed at
Bothanairidh, and in the evenings the young lassies would be making
great laughing while the cailleachs span; and once, long long ago, when
the crotal was young on the rocks on the moors, there came a swarthy
lad and said fareweel tae his lass under this tree. There was red wild
blood in the boy, and before he came back he had seen a many men swing
from the yard-arm. Ay, when he did return, he met a red bride, for
another had awaited his coming.

"'This will be the bride ye are seeking,' snarled he that waited, and
gave the sailor the dagger where the throat dimples above the
collar-bone. And they say the swarthy lad writhed him up against the
old tree and laughed.

"'As long as this tree stands,' he cried, 'you'll never hold to your
coward heart the lass ye have done the dirty killin' for,' and died.
Well, Hamish, I'm no' hand at stories, but the old hawthorn had aye
flourished white until then, and after that the flourish was fine rich
red, and when he that slew the swarthy lad sought to tear the tree
down, his hair changed colour in a night, and the strange folks' mark
was on him, and he wandered in the hills and died."

As we stood, I fitted into Dan's brief story--for his tale seemed to me
to resemble more the headings of a story than a real story,--I fitted
in a background of great wind-swept spaces, of bare rocks and cold
heather and that poor love-maddened outcast wandering alone, and
wondered what black pool cooled his brow at the last of it, and there
came to my ears a distant cry, and so sure was I that I had imagined
it, that I never turned to look, till Dan's laugh roused me.

"Come away from the standin' stanes and the heroes' graves. That wasna
the skirl o' a gho