oner go to the glen foot, and risk all," said John.

Sonachan grunted again; out he drew his dirk, and he rapped with the
hilt of it loud and long at the door. A crying of children rose within,
and, behold, I was a child again! I was a child again in Shira Glen,
alone in a little chamber with a window uncurtained and unshuttered,
yawning red-mouthed to the outer night My back was almost ever to
the window, whose panes reflected a peat-fire and a face as long as a
fiddle, and eyes that shone like coal; and though I looked little at the
window yawning to the wood, I felt that it never wanted some curious spy
outside, some one girning or smiling in at me and my book. I must look
round, or I must put a hand on my shoulder to make sure no other hand
was there,--then the Terror that drives the black blood from the heart
through all the being, and a boy unbuckling his kilt with fevered
fingers and leaping with frantic sobs to bed! One night when the black
blood of the Terror still coursed through me, though I was dovering over
to sleep, there came a knocking at the door, a knock commanding, a knock
never explained. It brought me to my knees with a horror that almost
choked me at the throat, a cold dew in the very palms of the hands. I
dare not ask who rapped for fear I should have an answer that comes some
day or other to every child of my race,--an answer no one told me of, an
answer that then I guessed.

All this flashed through my mind when the children's crying rose in the
dark interior--that cry of children old and young as they go through the
mysteries of life and the alley-ways of death.

The woman soothed her children audibly, then called out, asking what we
wanted.

"I'm a man from Appin," cried out Stewart with great promptness and
cunning, "and I have a friend or two with me. I was looking for the
house of Kilinchean, where a cousin of mine--a fine spinner and knitter,
but thrawn in the temper--is married on the tenant, and we lost our way.
We're cold and we're tired, and we're hungry, and----"

"Step in," said the woman, lifting back the door. "You are many miles
from Kilinchean, and I know Appin Mary very well."

But three of us entered, Stewart, M'Iver, and myself, the others on a
sudden inspiration preferring not to alarm the woman by betraying the
number of us, and concealing themselves in the byre that leaned against
the gable of the dwelling.

"God save all here!" said M'Iver as we stepped in, and the