"You are, I presume, a Protestant?" said Farquhar, uneasily.
At this suggestion she laughed louder still, but seemed to grow more and more in stature, till Farquhar became well-nigh sick at heart with astonishment and fear, and began to revolve in his mind the possibility of reaching the door of the shieling and rushing out into the storm, there to commit himself to Providence and the elements. Besides, as her stature grew, her eyes waxed redder and brighter, and her malevolent hilarity increased.
It was a fiend, a demon of the wild, by whom he was now visited and tormented in that sequestered hut.
His heart sank, and as her terrible eyes seemed to glare upon him, and pierce his very soul, a cold perspiration burst over all his person.
"Why do you grasp your dirk, Farquhar—ha! ha!" she asked.
"For the same reason that I hold Bran—to be ready. Am I not one of the King's Reicudan Dhu? But how know you my name?"
"'Tis a trifle to me, who knew MacGillony."
"From whence came you to-night?"
"From the Isle of Wolves," she replied, with a shout of laughter.
"A story as likely as the rest," said Farquhar, "for that isle is in the Western sea, near unto Coll, the country of the Clan Gillian. You must travel fast."