His feeling of dismay at the cavernous, the terrene dark, was not inconsistent with his pleasure in being out on the wild waste hillside, when heaven and earth were absolutely black, not seldom the whole of the night, in utter loneliness to eye or ear, and his never then feeling anything like dread. Then and there only did he seem to have room enough. His terror was of the smallest pressure on his soul, the least hint at imprisonment. That he could not rise and wander about among the stars at his will, shaped itself to him as the heaviness of his feet holding him down. His feet were the loaded gyves that made of the world but a roomy prison. The limitless was essential to his conscious wellbeing. ‘No a bittock,’ answered Kirsty, who felt awe anywhere--on hilltop, in churchyard, in sunlit silent room--but never fear. ‘It’s as like the place I was tellin ye aboot--’ ‘Ay, the cat-place!’ interrupted Steenie. ‘The place wi’ the pictur,’ returned Kirsty. Steenie darted forward, shot head-first into the hole as he had seen Kirsty do, and crept undismayed to the bottom of the slope. Kirsty followed close behind, but he was already on his feet when she joined him. He grasped her arm eagerly, his face turned from her, and his eyes gazing fixedly into the depth of the gallery, lighted so vaguely by the candle on the floor of its entrance. ‘I think I saw him!’ he said in a whisper full of awe and delight. ‘I think I did see him!--but, Kirsty, hoo am I to be sure ’at I saw him?’ ‘Maybe ye did and maybe ye didna see him,’ replied Kirsty; ‘but that disna metter sae muckle, for he’s aye seein you; and ye’ll see him, and be sure ’at ye see him, whan the richt time comes.’ ‘Ye div think that, Kirsty?’ ‘Ay div I,’ returned Kirsty, confidently. ‘I s’ wait,’ answered Steenie, and in silence followed Kirsty along the gallery. This was Steenie’s first, and all but his last descent into the _earth-house_, or _Picts’ House_, or _weem_, as a place of the sort is called: there are many such in the east of Scotland, their age and origin objects of merest conjecture. The moment he was out of it, he fled to the Horn. The next Sunday he heard read at church the story of the burial and resurrection of the Lord, and unavoidably after their talk about the catacombs, associated the chamber they had just discovered with the tomb in which ‘they laid him,’ at the same time concluding the top of the hill, where he had, as he believed, on certain favoured nights met the bonny man, the place whence he ascended--to come again as Steenie thought he did! The earth-house had no longer any attraction for Steenie: the bonny man was not there; he was risen! He was somewhere above the mountain-top haunted by Steenie, and that he sometimes descended upon it Steenie already knew, for had he not seen him there!