"Better the bottom o' the locker than the end o' the cable. Sit ye doon and warm yourself."
I was sore done wi' the long running, and lay on the rook floor with my head on my arms, and I felt as a hound feels after a long chase, till the caveman answered Dan. At the first I thought his tongue had been malformed as he stood in the light, for a growling and grumbling came from his throat; and as he growled, from the darkness of the chamber a great brindled dog stalked to his side and stretched his fore-paws, opened a mouth like a red pit, and whined with outstretched curling tongue.
"He would tear down a stag, him," says Dan, nodding at the brute.
Again came the growling rumbling from the stranger.
"Hark tae him, Marr; hark tae him—a stag. Ho, ho, ho! He would tear a man's throat oot at his first leap," and man and dog rumbled and growled in devilish mirth. "Sing tae me, dog—sing," and the man threw his head up, and there came the long greeting howl of a dog baying the moon, and dog and man howled in unison, with swaying bodies and heads thrown upwards.
"God, but the open hill's a bonny place," said McKinnon, and a shiver went over him. In this terrible place we lay the night—a great gloomy forbidding place in the belly of the hill. Shiver on shiver went through me as I looked round me. The walls were rock, bare and dry, converging high up in the gloom; for there was just the peat fire and a cruisie alight. Once, as though disturbed in its sleep, I heard a rock-pigeon "rookatihoo coo-a" away above me in some cranny that must open on the hill face. The smoke curled up in a rude dry-stone chimney for about five or six feet against the rock, and the bulk of it still ascended in a column, although the chimney stopped, but a waving pall hung over the cave, swaying and undulating in long waves and streamers, and the air below was cool and fresh. There were great carvings on the walls—warriors and ships, galleys and horses a-rearing, and on a flat stone projecting from the chimney, and serving as the brace or mantelpiece, were models of ships made from the breast-bones of birds, some quite large and others very small, and needing an infinite deal of patience. There were rough stools and a table, all of which must have been made inside the cave, and, indeed, the bark was dry and brittle on the legs. Great bundles of heather, fashioned like narrow beds, lay along the wall in the firelight, and like a dark unwinking eye the light glimmered on a pool. There were square steps cut in the rock down to the pool, which was shaped like a horn spoon with the handle cut off short, and the water entering it from a crack in the rock, noiselessly as oil, trickled silently away in a little sloping gutter to the back of the cavern. Who first discovered the cavern I never knew, but by the fire lay, twisted and blackened, the hilt and half of a sword, and in a corner a black and rust-pitted breastplate. The back part of the cave narrowed, and through a passage the Nameless Man passed to bring us meat and drink. Have you walked on a bare moor road in the pit mirk wi' a drizzle of soft mist in a silence you could hear? Have you felt the fear coming over you, like a cold hand on your heart, when ye knew that a thing gibbered and mouthed at your side? Well, the thought o' that man, the Nameless Man, brings fear to me in a lighted room.
For he was a dead white man, his hair, lank and white, hung round his shoulders, his beard was slimy and soft as a white hare's, face and hands cold, dead white, and his features were frozen.
No trace of any feeling showed on his face. His voice and his laughter rumbled from his throat, leaving his face unchanged, only his pupils waxed and waned like a cat's in the dark. He was covered with a patchwork of skins and tatters of cloth, and as he set meat before us, venison, it came to me that he must hunt his food in the dark, always in the dark. That cold whiteness was not of the good God's sunlight. As we ate, Dan told him some of our story, and the Nameless Man sat, a handful of his beard in his hand, his elbow on the table, and his eyes growing and fading.
"I'm sair feart I left him deid," said Dan. "If they come for us, dog, when we're lying at the still and the good water turnin' to fine whisky—and the good nice water, trickling and dripping through the rocks for a hundred years—if they creep upon us, dog, what will we be doing, you and me, Marr? Ho—ho—ho! killing them, eh? Leaving their bones wi' the white bones away in there—the old, old bones," and dog and man made a howling of laughter. I knew then that this was the watcher of a smugglers' still; for let the gang o' Preventives do their worst, whisky would still be made in the hills.
It came to me then why the folk would be leaving peats for the wee folks, as they said, when they would be taking down the creels from the hills; for the Nameless Man threw more on the fire from some hidden store, likely nearer his worm, when we had finished eating. The great dog lay at the rock by which we entered, and I saw that the stone was swung on a balance; but if there was a way to open from the outside I never knew till long after. McKinnon and Dan lay talking, but I was silent for the most part, thinking of the sword and the armour, and of the people who fashioned the well, and wondering about the old, old bones away through the dark passage into the heart of the hill. The far, far-away stories were in my mind of Finn and his warriors, of his great dogs and his queens. Did Ossian the bard tune his harp to great deeds, and to lovely women of the land of the Ever Young, in the cave of the past? Into my musings—for sleep had nearly come over me—broke the voice of the Nameless Man.
"I gave her to drink of the foamy milk—warm, and the bubbles of froth in it. 'Drink, my lost lass,' said I, 'for ye loved me well once,' and all the time I would be telling her that death was coming with the white milk. And she took up the fine nice milk and drank, because she had loved me well once, she that loved me yet but feared—the coward, the soft, soft, white coward that would lie on another man's heart after I had keeled her for myself. Ay, she took up the milk and drank, and I took my ways, and they came running to Glen Darruach to tell me she had died.