“Well, it was this way. Donald Cam was terribly put about by the way this old witch was plaguing all the animals, flying about in the night and nobody knowing whose byre she would not be lighting on next. The minister in Strathdiddle preached a great sermon against her, och, a very powerful sermon by what they still tell of it. But it was all to no purpose. No purpose at all. The old witch seemed to take a pure delight in spiting the minister’s holy words. Now, Donald Cam was a very religious man. Indeed, I believe he was an elder; but if he wasn’t an elder he was certainly a deacon. So being full of zeal for the work of the Lord he loaded his gun with a crooked sixpence and two silver buttons that belonged to the King of Scotland, and when the witch was away at her devilment he waited for her by the carn where she lived. Nobody knows to this day what happened exactly, but in the morning they found Donald Cam lying asleep on his back with a dead crane on top of him—heron some call the bird. Och, it was the old witch right enough, because she was never seen again and when they cut the crane open they found the crooked sixpence and the two silver buttons inside. Donald Cam was very pleased they found the buttons, because the King of Scotland gave them to his grandfather, and he would have been missing them sorely from the box where his grandfather put them. Ah, indeed, yes, it shows that the Lord does not turn His face from the godly man who keeps His commandments. And ever since the place has been called Achadh na Caillich. The Field of the Old Woman.”

“But how came this guy Donald to lie there with this bird on top of him?” the American asked.

“It was never rightly known,” Duncan replied. “Donald himself had a notion that the witch put a spell on him just as he fired. But others said it was the whisky he was after drinking to keep his courage up. Well, if it was the whisky, no man had a better right to it than Donald. There’s no man alive to-day in these parts who would sleep a night in Carn na Caillich, even if he had a bottle of Haig’s Gold Cap in each pocket.”

“Would you sleep there yourself, Duncan?” his chief asked.

“I wouldn’t like it, Ben Nevis, and that’s the truth I’m telling you. Herself may be dead, but that’s not to say the spirit of her will not be flying around still. But we mustn’t stay blethering like this. Here comes the rain.”

And indeed there did come the rain with a vengeance.