clachan that doesn’t run to meet ye, Grannie, whenever ye come o’er the muir.”

The wires clicked very fast.

“And,” continued Dugald, “though you’re maybe no’ very bonnie noo, everybody says, ‘What a pretty woman Nancy must have been in her time!’”

Nancy’s chin fell again, but the wires worked steadily on. Her mind was away back now in the distant past. She was thinking of one summer’s evening by Saint Ronan’s Well, ’neath the old monk’s tree, of a plighted troth and a broken ring, and a lad that went away to sea, and never, never, never came back. A broken ring, and a broken heart, a sorrow that had shadowed her life.

Click, click, click. Ah, well, every life has its romance.

“But Kenneth here has something to tell ye, Grannie.”

Clickety, clickety, clickety, go the wires. Nancy is all interest now, for dearly does she love her boy Kennie.

Then Kenneth told her about the fairy knoll and the strange cave he had found in its interior.

He told her all the story, just as we already know it; and for once only during all that evening, the wires ceased to click, and the old woman’s hands fell on her lap as she listened.

“It was long, long ago,” said Nancy. “Your father, Kennie, was but a boy then, just like you are noo. And his father was but a young man—”

“Ahem!” said the superstitious Highland keeper, giving a hasty half-frightened glance behind him into the darkness. “Ahem! you’ll not mak’ your story very fearsome, will ye, Grannie? Dinna forget the lateness o’ the nicht. Mind that we’ve o’er the lonesome muir to gang yet.”

“It was long ago,” said Nancy, addressing herself more particularly to Kenneth. “I lived then down by the kirk in the clachan, and there I was born, and the wee village was quieter far in those days than it is even now. Ye know, Kennie, where the burn joins the river, where the old ruin is among the willow trees?”

“Yes, Grannie.”

“Well, that house was no ruin then. It was deserted, though. It had gotten a bad name. Nobody would take it; and it seemed falling to pieces. The house stood, as you know, about a mile below your fairy knoll, and two miles beyond is the sea.”

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