“‘Can I trust ye,’ he said, ‘to deliver a letter at the Mill House?’
“I was feared to offend by refusing, so I took it. But lo! I forgot it a’thegither till I was coming hame. It was night, too, but deliver it I must.
“I took the road alang the auld march dyke across the hills. The moon was shining, but no’ very brightly, givin’ a feeble yellow kind o’ a licht through a haze o’ drivin’ clouds.
“Well, I was just near the dreariest part o’ the upper glen, and no’ far from the fairy knoll. I was wishing I were well past it, and away down to the clachan, where I could see the lights blinking cheerily from the houses among the trees.
“I was hurrying on, when suddenly, with an eldritch scream, something in white sprang from behind an etnach,” (juniper) “bush.
“I was a bold lass. Some would have fainted. My heart was in my mouth, but I felt impelled to throw myself at the thing, whatever it was. I rushed forward with a frightened shriek and grasped it. I wheeled its face towards the moon, and what think you saw I?”
“A brownie!” said Dugald. “Oh, Grannie, I’m all of a quiver.”
“He was no brownie. Only the auld, auld-fashioned face o’ little Corbie.”
“‘Let me go, Nancy. Let me go,’ he pleaded. ‘My father would kill me if he knew I was found out.’
“He wriggled out o’ my hands and fled, and I hardly felt the ground beneath my feet till I reached the low end o’ the glen and found myself opposite the gate o’ Mill House.