for a something here in this ghostly wood. The
cudgel and knife of folks I could not understand were coming on me!
Fast, fast, and hard I crunched my nuts, chewing shell and meat fiercely
between my teeth to fill the skull of my head with noise and shut out
the quietness. Never a taste of what I ate, sour or sweet. But so hard
and fast I crunched that soon my store of nuts was done, and there I
was helpless with my ears open to the roaring wave of sound that we call
silence. I stood a little, and though my back grewed at the chill of the
dreadful spaces behind me, I held my breath to study the full fright
of the hour. Something was coming to me; I knew it. When this thing
happened before, when a skin was my kilt and my shanks were bare,
whatever I had to meet had met me in the round space among the
candle-wood roots. The hair on my wrists stirred, a cry came to my
throat and was over the edge of it and into the dark night like a man's
heart scurrying craven to the door.

"Through the wood went that craven roar, the wood all its own and, a
stranger, I listened to my own voice wake up Echo far off on Ben Dearg.

"The doors of Echo shut on the only thing I knew and was half friendly
with in the Duke's wood, and down on me again came the quietest
quietness.

"'Be taking thy feet from here' said I to myself, taking out my
sailor-knife and scrugging my bonnet well on my brow. And there was no
wind, not a breath, on Creag Dubh. The stars black out, the rough ground
broken to my foot, the branches scraping unfriendly, I went on through
the trees.

"When one goes up from the Leacann hunting road into the farm-lands
he comes in a while on a space among the trees, clean shorn like the
shearing of a hook but for white hay that lies there thick and rustling
in the spring of the year. 'Black Duncan,' said I, 'be pulling thyself
together, gristle and bone, for here's the fright that stirs about the
dark with fingers and claws.' I was the first man (said my notion) who
ever set foot on the braes of Argyll, newly from Erin and Argyll thick
with ghosts; daytime or dark the woods were full of things that hate the
stranger. Under my feet the rotting dust of the fir-trees felt soft and
clogging, like the banks of new-delved graves. My back shivered again
to the feel of the space behind me; in my bonnet stirred my hair. I went
into the glade with a dry tongue rasping on the roof of my mouth.

"When the Terror came up against me, I could