t lay, a fertile flat, in a notch of the green hillside. When he
reached the house yard he asked for Mistress Betty M'Leod, and was led
to her presence. The old dame sat at her spinning-wheel in a farm
kitchen. Her white hair was drawn closely, like a thin veil, down the
sides of her head and pinned at the back. Her features were small, her
eyes bright; she was not unlike a squirrel in her sharp little movements
and quick glances. She wore a small shawl pinned around her spare
shoulders. Her skirts fell upon the treadle of the spinning-wheel. The
kitchen in which she sat was unused; there was no fire in the stove. The
brick floor, the utensils hanging on the walls, had the appearance of
undisturbed rest. Doors and windows were open to the view of the green
slopes and the golden sea beneath them.

'You come from Canada,' said the old dame. She left her spinning with a
certain interested formality of manner.

'From Montreal,' said he.

'That's the same. Canada is a terrible way off.'

'And now,' he said, 'I hear there are witches in this part of the land.'
Whereupon he smiled in an incredulous cultured way.

She nodded her head as if she had gauged his thought. 'Ay, there's many
a minister believes in them if they don't let on they do. I mind----'

'Yes,' said he.

'I mind how my sister went out early one morning, and saw a witch
milking one of our cows.'

'How did you know she was a witch?'

'Och, she was a neighbour we knew to be a witch real well. My sister
didn't anger her. It's terrible unlucky to vex them. But would you
believe it? as long as we had that cow her cream gave no butter. We had
to sell her and get another. And one time--it was years ago, when
Donald and me was young--the first sacrament came round----'

'Yes,' said he, looking sober.

'And all the milk of our cows would give hardly any butter for a whole
year! And at house-cleaning time, there, above the milk shelves, what
did they find but a bit of hair rope! Cows' and horses' hair it was. Oh,
it was terrible knotted, and knotted just like anything! So then of
course we knew.'

'Knew what?'

'Why, that the milk was bewitched. We took the rope away. Well, that
very day more butter came at the churning, and from that time on, more,
but still not so much as ought by rights to have come. Then, one day, I
thought to unknot the rope, and I undid, and undid, and undid. Well,
when I had got it undone, that day the butter came as it should!'