At that Sandy Nicol showed us a small object, which seemed to me to be a twisted horse-shoe nail wrapped round about with wool; but he would not be letting it go from his palm, and when I would have examined it closer he put it past.
"It's not Sandy that would be droving without his steel," he cried.
"Would you aye be carrying that?" said I; for he looked so wild and lawless that it was not in me to be believing that he trusted to aught save his dirk.
"There was a time no, mo bhallach," said Sandy Nicol, "a time when I would be selling back-calvers and stots to the Red Laird for the mainland markets; and it would just be the wee Broon Lass o' Ardbennan that saved the beasts—for, ye see, I did not always stay ma lane, and when my mother would be failin' and her joints stiffening like a' aged beasts, the milking would aye be done and the byre mucked when she got up in the morning. Oh, but she was the wise one, for she would be leaving the best o' the cream in a basin, and maybe a bannock, for the wee Broon Lass, for my mother would be seeing her flitting among the battens. And before she went away she would be telling me: 'Never be offering her boots or claes when the snaw comes, Sandy, for the Broonie o' Lag 'a bheithe[1] left in sore anger for that they pitied her in the snaw.'
"Direach sin, it was a fine day I started to drive the back-calvers and stots, and the sun red wi' a fine-weather haze, and the roads hard and dry, and it was maybe two hours I was on the road and the beasts settled, when there came a woman on the road and a shawl about her head, and I kent her for a devil's black bairn that could be telling her ain folk when the rain would come in the harvest, and when the butter would come on at the kirning.
"A bad unchancy woman; ye'll ken the breed o' them, for they will be sore feart o' clean burn-water, but they'll be coorieing ower a fire a' day, and talking to the black cat, and I had it in my mind to be turning when I saw her, for did she not come into the byre at Dyke-end when the beasts were at their fother, and she stood and she eyed them.
"'So bonny,' says she, 'so bonny and fat and glossy, and the wee bit speckled quey calves they'll be leaving,' and with that she walked up the byre and ran her hand over the tors of the beasts, crooning away to herself; and another month saw the last of the kye pic calved.
"Well, well, I stood when she came to me, and she smirked at me. 'Seven braw beasts, and not a lame yin among them,' says she, and tittered a wee bit laugh that set the dogs girning through their bare teeth; and then she went her way, and her laughing coming back to me, and we would not be far on when the first of the beasts was hirpling; and one after the other the lameness came on them, till I could just have sat down and grat that I had not set the dogs on the witch.
"I would just be turning the beasts on the road for a wee, when there came the wee Broon Lass among the bracken on the hillside, and then I left the road and took the dogs with me, and we hid on the low side, for fear to anger the wee Broon Lass. She went among the beasts, and they would be kenning her, and lowing quietly like calves, and she would be lifting their feet, and then there would be a hole in the clits o' them a'. And the wee Broon Lass, she blew and she blew into the hole, and went on to the next, and in a wee the beasts were walking sound, and taking a bite at the sprits and the scrog on the roadside, and I lay close till I saw the wee one near the rise o' the hill, and started the beasts again, and the lameness came near them not any more, but aye I would be carrying the steel after that."
In the middle of the glen we left Sandy Nicol with his dogs and his travelling beasts, and before we turned the bend where the nut-trees were I looked back, and there he came on slowly with the sunset light on him as he came, and I saw him looking to the great rocks on his left hand as though he waited the coming of something not of this world; and again he would be looking down through the bare trees to the dark glen where the burn was muttering and grumbling coldly, and it was strange to me that these wild men, so terrible in their anger, would be believing all these old stories, until the thought came to me that it would just be the poetry and imaginings of the Celt, alone among the hills that are aye on the very point of speaking to their children; for a man, and a bold man, will be seeing and hearing strange things among the hills, when the mist comes down, when he will have listened to the stories of hate and love and clan feuds of his folks since he could be listening, clapped on his creepie stool close to his mother's skirt, and his head against her knees.