north of Scotland. Oh, it is such a wild corner of the world! Beautiful
craggy hills and dark, deep lakes--rough moorlands purple with heather
and such wonderful skies at sunset! The cottage where my father had
lived as a boy when he herded sheep is still there--I have bought it
for myself now,--it is a little stone hut of three rooms,--and another
one about a mile off where he took my mother to live, and where I came
into the world!--I have bought that too. Yes--I felt a great thrill of
happiness when I stood there knee-deep among the heather, my father
clasping my hand, and looking, with me, on those early scenes of his
boyhood when he had scarcely a penny to call his own! Yet HE was
sad!--very sad! and told me then that he would give all his riches to
feel as light of heart and free from care as he did in those old days!
And then--then we went to see old Alison--" Here she broke off,--a
strange light came into her eyes and she smiled a little. "I think I
had better not tell you about old Alison!" she said.

"Why not?" and Don Aloysius returned her smile. "If old Alison has
anything to do with your happiness I should like to hear."

"Well, you see, you are a priest," went on Morgana, slowly, "and she is
a witch. Oh yes, truly!--a real witch! There is no one in all that part
of the Highlands that does not know of her, and the power she has! She
is very, very old--some folks say she is more than a hundred. She knew
my father and grandfather--she came to my father's cottage the night I
was born, and said strange things about a 'May child'--I was born in
May. We went--as I tell you--to see her, and found her spinning. She
looked up from her wheel as we entered--but she did not seem surprised
at our coming. Her eyes were very bright--not like the eyes of an old
person. She spoke to my father at once--her voice was very clear and
musical. 'Is it you, John Royal?' she said--'and you have brought your
fey lass along with you!' That was the first time I ever heard the word
'fey.' I did not understand it then."

"And do you understand it now?" asked Aloysius.

"Yes"--she replied,--"I understand it now! It is a wonderful thing to
be born 'fey'! But it is a kind of witchcraft,--and you would be
displeased--"

"At what should I be displeased?" and the priest bent his eyes very
searchingly upon her--"At the fact,--which none can disprove,--that
'there are things in heaven and earth' which are beyond our immediate
knowledge? Th