"Well, if I were you, Duncan, I would get out the boat, and I would offer to take her to the cave. And I will be telling her more stories to-night, when we are spinning. The lass is a changeling, sure enough, and she will go. When Rory comes back, he will hear, and he will be mad with her, and they will quarrel. You can go over to Uig that day" ("Discretion being the better part of valour," evidently, in Catriona's eyes). "They will quarrel, and will break it off, and she will come to you, in time."
Duncan considered the plan slowly. Yes, it suited him excellently well. He wanted no noisy quarrel, no measuring of strength. He, too, remembered Rory's muscles at the Portree games. But this secret working in the dark, in MacPhee's absence, was quite to his taste.
He made up his mind now that his mother was a woman of much wisdom. He graciously told her he approved, and she should have a little present on his next trip to Portree. Her stories to Ishbel of the cave were to be many and enticing!
CHAPTER III.
IN THE CAVE OF GOLD.
"Duncan, Duncan, but I hef promised!" It was the next night, and Ishbel stood before the cottage in her dark wincey skirt and green cotton jacket, her face turned up to her cousin's. All last night, all through the day, old Catriona's stories had haunted her. The old woman had gone cunningly to work. She began, in a rambling way, once they were both seated at the spinning-wheel, by remarking that to-morrow would be Midsummer's Night, and the fairies would be holding high frolic in the Cave of Gold. She herself was old, and frail, and feeble, else how gladly would she have gone! She had the second sight—she would perhaps see what no other could! For, with a branch of rowan—and she had a branch of dry rowan in her kist, ready for her burial—or a naked dagger—Duncan's big knife would do—there was no danger! To see the little green folk dancing! And—here her voice fell, and she glanced into all the dark shadows of the kitchen, and up by the oak settle near the window—perhaps to hear the faint and far-off skirl of Angus Macdonald's pipes! They said that sound was heard still. At first Ishbel had risen uneasily, saying she would go and see if there were enough oat-cakes for supper—or was that anyone in the barn?
But Catriona bade her be seated, sharply—the girl should not escape her thus—and then she asked if she (Catriona) had ever told Ishbel the story of Angus Macdonald and the Cave of Gold? No, Ishbel answered unwillingly, and sat down again, the wheel idle, the soft grey carded wool lying in her lap. Catriona, spinning fast—with the low dirl of the wheel acting as a sort of accompaniment to her voice—told the story. She spoke in Gaelic, of course, and it is difficult to put in English the creeping, insidious fear and mystery of the tale.
How the piper, Angus Macdonald, loved a MacLeod of Dunvegen, a follower of the great MacLeod, and how this lady-love's father would have none of him, but set him some of those foolish and impossible tasks so dear to the story-teller of all ages and climes and nationalities.
One task bade him enter the Cave of Gold at midnight, on Midsummer's Night, and play "MacLeod of Dunvegen," passing through the little dancing folk, and penetrating far into the mystery of the cave's windings, where no Skye man had ever been. Macdonald, of course, took up the challenge, and with his tartan ribbands waving wildly from the pipes, and the mouth-piece at his lips, he was seen standing at the shingly edge of the cave, his kilt tossing against his brown knees in the sudden gust of wind. The men who rowed him up saw this, and heard the first wild pealing notes. Thus, playing proudly and happily, he entered the cave with his dog at his heels. They waited and watched, and listened, and at last heard one awful cry! Then there was silence. He had passed the fairies, but—
"Never home came he!"