fit for the mingling of lovers' speech. If you listen not, I
laugh at you and go my way. But the winter is coming fast."

Far away in these grimy towns, fighting with mean cares and petty
jealousies, dissatisfied, despondent, careless as to the future, how
could this message reach her to fill her heart with the singing of a
bird? He dared not send it, at all events. But he wrote to her. And the
bitter travail of the writing of that letter he long remembered. He was
bound to give her his sympathy, and to make light as well as he could of
those very evils which he had been the first to reveal to her. He tried
to write in as frank and friendly a spirit as she had done; the letter
was quite cheerful.

"Did you know," said he, "that once upon a time the chief of the
Macleods married a fairy? And whether Macleod did not treat her well, or
whether the fairy-folk reclaimed her, or whether she grew tired of the
place, I do not know quite; but, at all events, they were separated, and
she went away to her own people. But before she went away she gave to
Macleod a fairy banner--the _Bratach sith_ it is known as--and she told
him that if ever he was in great peril, or had any great desire, he was
to wave that flag, and whatever he desired would come to pass. But the
virtue of the _Bratach sith_ would depart after it had been waved three
times. Now the small green banner has been waved only twice; and now I
believe it is still preserved in the Castle of Dunvegan, with power to
work one more miracle on behalf of the Macleods. And if I had the fairy
flag, do you know what I would do with it? I would take it in my hand,
and say: '_I desire the fairy people to remove my friend Gertrude White
from all the evil influences that disturb and distress her. I desire
them to heal her wounded spirit, and secure for her everything that may
tend to her lifelong happiness. And I desire that all the theatres in
the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland--with all their musical
instruments, lime-light, and painted scenes--may be taken and dropped
into the ocean, midway between the islands of Ulva and Coll, so that the
fairy folk may amuse them selves in them if they will so please_.' Would
not that be a very nice form of incantation? We are very strong
believers here in the power of one person to damage another in absence;
and when you can kill a man by sticking pins into a waxen image of
him--which everybody knows to be true--surely you ought to be ab