She had risen with the first word, and started off like a lapwing, so that, ere she finished, distance deadened her voice.
"Wait! please wait," shouted Rick; "the animals went in two by two, remember!"
It was of no avail; so he caught up his rod and ran after her, leaving the idol to fulfil Miss Willina's rôle of sphinx.
It had been dark some hours before she dropped her knitting with a purposely dramatic start.
"Oh, Rick! didn't I say I had a presentiment? Now I've gone and left that wicked idol on the harp--on the Alt na heac harp of all places in the world, and you a descendant of the Vikings!"
Rick, at work on an infant Samuel for his aunt's room, looked up cheerfully.
"Well, what has that to do with it?"
"What? why, everything. Don't you know the legend? Everything left on that harp disappears. The dead take it as a tribute, and if they don't like it, they send it back to work evil to the living for a month and a day."
"Willina!"
Mr. John Macdonald was a silent man, but when he did speak, his meaning was clear. "Where the devil you get all that rubbish passes me. I've lived longer in this island than you, I've seen more of the people than you, yet I never heard such trash."