Things are not, however, always reported as of such an innocent and Christian character. A collector happened to be present at a conversation between two believers in the Evil Eye. One of them said, “Those who are working at such as that, applying _eolas_, are not helped but by the ‘bad one,’ for if it were that they were doing good they would not need to be hiding themselves when they would be at it. P. McL., a decent man, said his cow was injured, and sent for A. T. The cow was in a little hut, and when A. went in where the cow was P. put his ear to a little window that was in the wall, and he said, that when he heard such language as A. had, he would never again send for her should every cow he would have be unwell. She put her cap under her two knees—she was bare-headed and with her knees bare, but kneeling on her cap apparently—and she prayed to the vile one. (‘_Ghuidh i ris an fhear mhosach._’) B. said, ‘Was that the time she said that my father’s brother injured the cow?’ That was the very time. You were living beside P. then.” FORM OF PAYMENT “The labourer is worthy of his hire.” A case has been already given where the reciter said that nothing was done without pay, but not of money. We must not generalise in that way. A native of Tiree says, speaking of his experience in the cure of a horse of his father’s, “All these _eolas_ folk must get a piece of silver. It may be a shilling or two shillings. This they say makes the cure more certain, and they cannot promise a cure without it. The lad took with him a two-shilling piece and went to an _eolas_ man who lived five miles away.” Apparently the silver is given in the form of money as the most convenient medium, though there is good reason for the supposition that the whiteness of silver makes it specially appropriate as a medium of remuneration. The instance in which the child that was ill is described as if singing “do re do,” the woman who cured it received from the father tea and sugar which he had taken with him when he went to consult her; but she said to “my man” (it was the mother who recited the incident) “that she was not wanting anything and would do it for us for nothing, but that he would need to come back with white silver. I sent him back with a sixpence to give her.” An innkeeper, a well-read, shrewd woman of about five-and-forty, tells of a case with which she was well acquainted in which a near neighbour consulted an old man, wanting him to bring back her butter. “She said that she would pay him if he would bring it back to her.” He said that he did not want payment, but at the same time he could not bring it back unless he were paid in silver for doing so; that being so, he would require to take something from her, as otherwise the cure would not be successful. So she gave him the silver and soon had all the butter that she lost.“