question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had

just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare

upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. The country was pleasant

round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and

the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared

to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of

the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. My heart sank.

"That!" I cried.

The woman's face lit up with a malignant anger. "That is the house of

Shaws!" she cried. "Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it;

blood shall bring it down. See here!" she cried again--"I spit upon

the ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall! If ye see the

laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and

nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him

and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or

bairn--black, black be their fall!"

And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song,

turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my

hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled

at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest

me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out of my legs.

I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws. The more I looked,

the pleasanter that country-side appeared; being all set with hawthorn

bushes full of flowers; the fields dotted with sheep; a fine flight of

<<BackPagesTo menuNext>>