Dan had a stone jar in his hand, and he poured a stiff jorum, and held it to auld Kate, greetin' at the fireside.
"The Red Laird's gone tae his ain folk, cailleach," says Dan, standing straight and manly beside the huddled old woman. "Good points he had and bad, but he's finished his last rig and taken the long fee.
"Drink tae the memory o' him, Kate: ye kent him weel, and he had aye a dram for a ceilidher."
"Ou ay, Dan, mo leanabh, ou ay; but I cannot thole the thought o' his spirit fleeing among the cauld clear stars, for there's nae heaven for him if his ain piper is no there to cheer him, or mak' him wae. Och, ay, I'll tak' the dram, but I'll be sore afraid there's plenty o' pipers in hell wi' the devils dancing on hot coals tae their springs, and he'll maybe be well enough."
As Dan put round the drink the doleful mood lifted a wee, and the lads started to tell stories.
"I mind me," said Donald, the shepherd—"I mind o' a night I had on the hills at the time o' the lambing, and in the grey o' the morning, when the rocks are whispering one to another, and will be just back in their places when a man comes near them, and when ye hear voices speaking not plainly, because o' the scish o' the burn on the gravelly mounds, but if ye listen till the burn is quiet a wee, ye'll be hearing the laughing o' the Wee Folk at their games.
"Mora, in the grey o' the morning, I would be just among the sprits[2] above the loch-side, when there came an eerie 'swish, swish' at my side, slow and soft. I thought it would be a hare, and I stopped to let her get away, for I would not be crossing her path, but see her I could not, and I turned round to speak to 'Glen,' and there was no dog there at all.
"Ay, well, I whistled and I whistled in that dreary place till the noise of it put a fear on me, and I started on again, and there at my side was the swish, swish in the sprits, and I would be poking my crook among them, but when I would be stopping it would be stopping, and I felt my hair bristle on my neck for the fear on me; but I pushed on, looking at my feet and all round me, till something inside of myself made me be looking up, and there was something before me, wi' eyes glowering at me—oh, big, big it was, as a stack o' hay, and it was in my path, and I shut my eyes and stood, for it would kill me. And when nothing would be happening I opened my two eyes, and it was not there, and then I looked round with just my head, and aw!"—and a shudder went through the shepherd, and he gulped at his drink,—"it was just at my own very shoulder grinning at me. And I ran and ran, skirling like a hare, and it behind me—ran till I felt my heart beating in my throat, and ran through burn and briars and hedges till I ran into the barn and fell on the straw, and remembered no more."
"And why," says I, "did you not run into your ain house?"
"Are you not knowing that?" says Donald. "If I had run to my house and the door shut, I would just be fallin' dead on the doorstep."