horrid, with arched tails and fiery eyes--as wild to
look at as though they had wandered in from the moor. These retreated
into the dark corners of the room, whence we could hear them purring and
spitting, and see their fiery eyes set on us in a circle out of the
gloom, which was dense as night everywhere, save only immediately about
the fire.

"I am nae deil, though ye think it, and maist folk says it," said the
idiot, fixing his eyes on me. "Some says the daddie o' me was the deil,
and some says Mardrochat. I kenna. There's no' muckle to choose between
them. Ye can ask my mither gin ye like. I never speered her mysel'.
Ye'll hae a sup o' my parritch. They are guid parritch--no' like my
mither's parritch. I wad advise ye to hae nocht to do wi' my mither's
parritch. Heard ye ever o' the Hefter o' the Star?"

I told him no, and sat down to see what might happen in this strange
abode so near to the two places where dwelled those whom I loved
best--the Bower of the Star and the Cave of Macaterick. But I loosened
my sword and felt that the grip of my pistols came easy to my hand.

"Be na feared o' puir Gash Gibbie o' the Star Sheiling," cried the
object, noticing the action; "he's as honest as he is ugly. But keep wid
o' the mither o' him, gin ye wad scape the chiding of the channering
worm."

The natural seemed to read the fears of my heart before I knew them
myself.

"Na, ye'll no' dee like the Hefter o' the Star. He was an ill loon, him;
he wadna let my mither be, when he cam to heft hoggs in the mid o' the
year. He spied on us as he sat on a hill-tap to watch that his sheep
didna break dykes. But ken ye what my mither did? She gaed oot to him
wi' a wee drap kail broth. Tak' ye nane o' my mither's kail broth. They
are no' canny. But the hefter, silly body, took mair o' them than he was
the better o'. He took them doon in a bit hollow to be oot o' the wind,
and when they fand him, he had manned it to crawl back to his watcher's
hill-tap. But there the silly, feckless loon died like a trout on the
bank. He didna like my mither's broth. Na, they didna gree weel wi'
him!"

And Gash Gibbie went on yammering and grumbling, while I sat and gazed
dumbfounded at him, and at the ugly grimalkins in the dark corners,
which stared at me with shining eyes, till I wished myself well out of
it all.

"An' ken ye what my mither said when the next hefter cam to see after
his sheep on the hill?"

I shook my head.

"She said, 'W