Struggling to escape, he merely added to the paralysing awe which held his captor.
"Who are you—what are you? Are you the thing of the grave, the black guide I have heard of?"
With a sudden jerk the dwarf freed himself. The next moment he bounded aside, then, without a glance behind him, fled.
Cameron sprang forward, but when he found that he had missed his grip he drew up again, and stood listening intently. If it was a spirit, it made a noise of running like a human: if it was a creature of the grave, it hurried back to no hollow near by: if it was Black Donald himself, Sir Diabhol had fled, affrighted!
Ah, the Cailliach! He had not thought of her! It might well be that the demon-woman had tried to snare him. If so, what, who, had saved him?
Dazed and sick he stood for a moment, because of a crash of a thunderbolt against a near height. The granite splintered like glass. In his mouth his palate shrank: his nerves strained, quivering.
Who, what, hurled that thunderbolt? Was it God? Was He answering his wild prayer?
If it were of God, why had it not stricken him? Hark! A scream far off! Had the leaping Cailliach been slain by the lightning, as a flying man by the spear of his pursuer? Had God given him these things as signs? These voices, that awful touch as of human hands?
He bowed his head. Tears scalded the burning lids of his blind eyes. Suddenly he sank to his knees, and with outstretched arms repeated an ancient rune of his fathers, the Cry to Age, the Rann-an-h' Aoise:
O thou that on the hills and wastes of Night art Shepherd,