"I would like myself," said the traveller, "to come to the bottom of this business. What is it for, and who has the doing of it? The moment you speak of a light ye pre-suppose a person that lights it and mainy adjuncks and accessories. Now there's nobody, or next to nobody, living in that auld ruin. It's some rendeyvouss, I can easily understand that. The days of conspiracies are gone by, or I would say it was something against the state; but whatever it is, it must have a purpose, and mortal hands must do it, seeing there are no other. I have heard since ever I began to travel this country of the Kinloch Houran light, but I never heard a reason assigned."
"It's the living lord," cried the maid, "as everybody knows! that is called to meet with——"
Here the young lady interfered audibly—
"Mysie, not a word!" The woman's voice continued, stifled as if a hand had been laid on her mouth.
"With them that are—with ane that is—I'm saying nothing, Miss Oona, but what all the loch is well aware——"
"It's just a ferlie of this part of the world," said John the driver; "nae need of entering into it with them that believe naething. I'm no what ye call credulous mysel'; but when it comes to the evidence of a man's ain senses——"
"And what have your senses said to ye, my fine fellow? that there's a queer kind of a glimmer up upon the auld tower? So are there corpse-candles, if I'm not mistaken, seen by the initiated upon your burial isle—what do you call it?"
"And wha has a word to say gainst that?" cried the driver angrily; whilst Mysie behind murmured—"It's well seen ye have naething to do with any grave there."
Now Walter was as entirely free from superstition as any young man need be; but when he heard the laugh with which the sceptic greeted these protests, he had the greatest mind in the world to seize him by the collar and pitch him into the bog below. Why? but the impulse was quite unreasonable and defied explanation. He had as little faith in corpse-candles as any bagman ever had, and the embarrassed and uneasy consciousness he had that the end of his journey was inexplicable, and its purpose ridiculous, led him much more to the conclusion that he was being placed in a ludicrous position, than that there was anything solemnly or awfully mysterious in it. Nevertheless, so far from ranging himself upon the side of the enlightened modern who took the common-sense view of these Highland traditions, his scorn and impatience of him was beyond words. For his own part he had not been sufficiently self-possessed to join in the discussion; but at this moment he ventured a question—
"Is this old castle you speak of—" here he paused not knowing how to shape his inquiry; then added, "uninhabited?" for want of anything better to say.