home, grandam,
and leave us to our business. If they find you in Lochaber they will
gralloch you like a Yule hind."

She leered, witch-like, at him, clutched suddenly at his sword-hilt, and
kissed it with a frenzy of words, then sped off, singing madly as she
flew.

We left the Dark Dame on Levenside as we ferried over to Lochaber,
and the last we saw of her, she stood knee-deep in the water, calling,
calling, calling, through the grey dun morning, a curse on Clan Donald
and a blessing on Argile.

His lordship sat at the helm of a barge, his face pallid and drawn with
cold, and he sighed heavily as the beldame's cries came after us.

"There's little of God's grace in such an omen," said he, in English,
looking at the dim figure on the shore, and addressing Gordon.

"It could happen nowhere else," said the cleric, "but in such a
ferocious land. I confess it, my lord--I confess it with the bitter
shame of surrender, that I behold generations of superstition and
savagery still to beat down ere your people are so amenable to the
Gospel as the folks of the Lowland shires. To them such a shrieking
harridan would be an object of pity and stern measure; they would
call her mad as an etter-cap, and keep her in bounds: here she is made
something of a prophetess------"

"How?" asked Argile, shortly, and he was looking wistfully at the hills
we were leaving--the hills that lay between him and his books.

"There's not a Highlander in your corps but has bowed his head to her
blessing; there's not one but looks upon her curse of the MacDonalds as
so much of a gain in this enterprise."

"Oh," said his lordship, "you are a little extravagant We have our
foolish ways, Gordon, but we are not altogether heathen; and do you
think that after all there might not be something in the portents of a
witch like yon in her exaltation?"

"No more than's in the howling of the wind in the chimney," said Gordon,
quickly.

"Perhaps not," said Argile, after a little, "perhaps not; but even the
piping of the vent has something of prophecy in it, though the wind
bloweth where it listeth. I have only a scholar's interest in these
things, I give you my word, and----"

He laughed with a little restraint before he went on.

"Do you know, John," he called out to M'Iver--"do you know what our
_cailleach_ friend says of our jaunt? She put a head in at my tent last
night, and 'Listen, MacCailein,' said she, 'and keep on high roads,'
said she, 'and