have taught me better, for the Garden of Eden was a fine place to sin in by all accounts, yet the environment did not mitigate the punishment. In these young days, when my body glowed from a swim and my eyes were clear, I thought the minister too hard on that original iniquity.

It was coming on for dinner-time—lowsin' time, as we say in the field—when Dan shouted—

"Hamish," says he, "who'll yon be that's travellin' so fast above the
Craig-an-dubh?"

"I will be telling you that, Dan, when she's half a mile nearer."

"Ye hinna the toon mirk rubbed out your een yet, Hamish, or ye would ken the bonny spaewife. I've been watchin' her this last three 'bouts."

"Dan, Dan," said I, "do you think of nothing but women and horses?
Have ye never learned the lesson of Joseph?"

"Man, Hamish," says he, with a whimsical smile and a hand at his moustache, "ye should put a' things in their proper order. Horses and weemen noo. It's not a bad thing—a while wi' a lass after the horses are bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph"—his smile broadened until I could see his teeth—"if it had been Dauvit the leddy had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep about it. . . .

"It's a fine lesson yon, I aye think, for auld men to be preaching, but deevil a word about their ain youthfu' rants. Ye're a lusty lad yirsel', and there's many a cheery nicht among the lasses wi' petticoats and short-goons, and I'll teach ye hoo tae whistle them oot if ye would leave your books and come raking wi' Dan."

We had unyoked the horses and got astride, and when we came to the gate there was the bonny spaewife carrying a bairn in a tartan shawl. Dan drew up, and I also; so there we stood, the horses in an impatient semi-circle on the road, Dan and I on horseback, and the woman looking up at us.

She had the blackest eyes I ever saw, and hair black and curly as a water-dog's clustered over her head, and the wee rain-drops clung about the curls round her ears and brow. Her nose was delicate and faultless, and her complexion was that born of sun and rain and wind. There seemed a smile to play round her red lips, and a sombreness about her eyes (so that she held mine fixed), until Dan spoke.

"I think, Belle," said he, "you're gettin' bonnier, and if it wasna for the wean I would leave a kiss on your bonny red mouth."

Round the pupils of her black eyes a little ring began to glow, as though a light came from a great distance through darkness, her white teeth bit on her under lip, and she stepped closer to Dan's horse.

"Haud away, woman, haud away, for the love o' your Maker; the stallion canna thole weemen about him."

I fear me the town had taken some of the game out of me, for when I saw the big dark horse flatten his ears, the wicked eyes rolling, and the great fore-hoofs drumming on the road, ready to leap and batter the woman and her bairn to a bloody pulp fornent me, my stomach turned, as we say, and I felt sick and giddy. Many a morning had I stood at the loose-box door and watched the devil in the horse and the devil in the man battle for mastery, and aye the horse was cowed. Even on the mornings when I heard Dan's step, soft and wary on the cobbles, before the sun was up, and knew by the look of him, and the gruffness in his voice, that he had travelled many a weary mile from his light-o'-love, and that sleep had not troubled him, I would hear the stable door opening and Dan whistling like the cheery early bird as he opened the corn-kist. After the morning feed the battle began, for Chieftain had a devil, but I think Dan had seven of that ilk.

"It's him or me, Hamish," he would croon, "him or me, but I'm likin' myself a' the time"; and he kept the lathering, plunging devil off himself, whiles with his fists, and whiles with a short stick.

"I'll handle him were he twice as big and twice as bad. I'll hae nae gentlemen among the horse when there's lea to plough!" and the fight would go on. But Dan was the only man who could handle Chieftain, and there seemed a kind of laughing comradeship between them.

I have digressed that you might see with my eyes the queer uncanny thing that happened on the road there between the woman and the horse. I have told you the spaewife—if spaewife you would call her, for I think sorceress fitted her better—I have said she came close to Chieftain's head, her black eyes fairly lowing; and as the brute, his skin twitching, gathered himself to rear on her, she hit him full on the mouth with her little brown hand, and hissed a word at him in her own tongue. As the word struck my ears I felt myself tingle to my finger-tips, and the world seemed to go quiet all round me. The horse's ears went forward, and he stretched his great neck, and there he was quiet as an old pony, nibbling with his lips at the woman's shawl and hair.

And the woman looked at Dan.

A kind of half laugh, half sigh, left his lips.

"I wish," said he, "I had your gait o' handlin' horse. It's desperate sudden, but it's sure, as our friend Hamish wid observe. Maybe, my dear, you'll hiv a spell tae turn the horse tae himsel' again and something extra, an' I'm no' sayin' but what I would be likin' him better, for sittin' here on a quate beast that sould be like the ravening devil o' holy writ is no' canny."

"Spell," said the girl, for indeed she was little more, and under her brown skin I could see the darker red rising. "Spell, ye night-hawk!" and her broad bosom heaved with the rage in her, and her body trembled with living anger.

"I come o' folk, ye reiver, that lay down and rose up among their horse, in the black tents, that loved and hated among their horse, that lived and died among their horse, and ye would talk to me o' spells. Did I but say the word to that black horse, not you nor any o' the folk ye cam' crooked among would straddle him and live to boast o' it after."

Dan sat his horse like a statue. It makes my old eyes moist and my throat choky to this day to think of it, for I loved him through everything. Could he have had command of heavy horse, and won his rest on some glorious field, brave, headstrong, devil-may-care Dan; but there he sat and looked on the Cassandra, and his eyes were laughing from his stern face as he took a turn on the rope reins.

"Back, my bonny horse," said he to Chieftain, and there was a kind of joyous lilt in his voice. "Draw away your pair, Hamish, and this lan' horse o' mine. We'll miss our dinner maybe, but I've an unco hankering after this word."

Away down in my heart I knew what was coming, and I watched the woman loosen her tartan shawl and lay her infant in a neuk among the hedge roots.

"I'm waitin' now, my dear," said Dan, "and in case I dee I'll tell ye I think I could break you in, for I like the devil temper bleezin' in your bonny black een, and your lips would warm a deein' man. My dear, I think I could be your man for a' ye say I cam' crooked; for spaewife or no—God's life, ye're awfu' bonny, Belle."

The gipsy gave a little lilting laugh.

"You," says she—"you. I'm not saying but you're a pretty man, and I've good looks enough for baith—if I loved ye; but, man, my love would be a flame. Wid ye burn with me, lad; wid ye burn?"

"I think I would too," said he, "for your een have started the bleeze a'ready, and I'm dootin' it'll finish in brimstane."

"Ay, ay, Dan; I'm spaein' true. I jibed at you, although you did not say the word o' the glens o' the wee creatur' under the hedge there, as ye might have. Ye've good blood in ye, lad, and I'm loving