As they drew near the little cottage, a lonely dwelling on the brae which sloped to the glen, they saw that the occupant had not yet gone to bed, for a red gleam of light stole comfortingly across the forlorn dark.
With a significant touch on the shoulder of each of his companions, Ian led them to within a yard or two of the window.
"Hush," he whispered, in a momentary lull; "make no noise as we look in. She might hear, and blast us with her evil eye. Perhaps she is even now talking with some warlock or fiend."
Trembling, the three men huddled under the wall. At last, slowly, and with hearts wildly a-throb, they raised themselves and looked within.
The room was bare in its clean poverty. On the rickety wooden table was a bowl with a little unfinished porridge in it. A yard away was an open Gaelic Bible, with a pair of horn spectacles laid across the open page. At a spinning stool between the table and the peat-fire was an old woman, kneeling, with her hands clasped and her face upraised. On the poor, tired, worn features was a look of pathetic yearning, straining from a white and beautiful peace.
So rapt was she that she did not see a hand move the outer latch of the window, or feel the sudden breath of the night-air.
Then those without, waiting to hearken to sorcery more appalling than the savagery of the tempest, heard old Ealasaid repeat this prayer:
"Tha 'n la nis air falbh ùainn,
Tha 'n oidhche 'tighinn orm dlùth;
'S ni mise luidhe gu dion