string. It was made
by the wind, I knew, for it came loudest in the gusty bits of the night
and from the east, and when there was a lull I could hear it soften away
and end for a second or two with a dunt, as if some heavy, soft thing
struck against wood.

Whatever it was, the burghers of Inneraora paid no heed, but slept,
stark and sound, behind their steeked shutters.

The solemnity of the place that I knew so much better in a natural
lively mood annoyed me, and I played there and then a prank more
becoming a boy in his first kilt than a gentleman of education and
travel and some repute for sobriety. I noticed I was opposite the house
of a poor old woman they called Black Kate, whose door was ever the
target in my young days for every lad that could brag of a boot-toe,
and I saw that the shutter, hanging ajee on one hinge, was thrown open
against the harled wall of the house. In my doublet-pocket there were
some carabeen bullets, and taking one out, I let bang at the old woman's
little lozens. There was a splinter of glass, and I waited to see if
any one should come out to find who had done the damage. My trick was
in vain; no one came. Old Kate, as I found next day, was dead since
Martinmas, and her house was empty.

Still the moaning sound came from the town-head, and I went slowly
riding in its direction. It grew clearer and yet uncannier as I sped on,
and mixed with the sough of it I could hear at last the clink of chains.

"What in God's name have I here?" said I to myself, turning round Islay
Campbell's corner, and yonder was my answer!

The town gibbets were throng indeed! Two corpses swung in the wind, like
net bows on a drying-pole, going from side to side, making the woeful
sough and clink of chains, and the dunt I had heard when the wind
dropped.

I grued more at the sound of the soughing than at the sight of the
hanged fellows, for I've seen the Fell Sergeant in too many ugly
fashions to be much put about at a hanging match. But it was such a poor
home-coming! It told me as plain as could be, what I had heard rumours
of in the low country, riding round from the port of Leith, that the
land was uneasy, and that pit and gallows were bye-ordinar busy at the
gates of our castle. When I left for my last session at Glascow College,
the countryside was quiet as a village green, never a raider nor a
reiver in the land, and so poor the Doomster's trade (Black George) that
he took to the shoeing of horses.