An owl swooped, and half fearfully she followed the line of its flight. As it rose again against the near horizon, she saw there at the meeting of stone and sky a trail of black smoke, barely distinguishable in the darkening gloom. She followed it downward. And there, half buried in the hard earth which bounded it on three sides, she saw her aunt's sometime residence, the `witch's hole' as her mother had called it. And though she loved her aunt, and had nowhere else to go, she could not help feeling a moment of doubt. A wedge of stone wall---one door, one window---was all the face it showed, the short chimney rising further to the sunken right. It was in fact a hole, dug and lined with stone perhaps a thousand years before by some wandering Pict, with a living roof of roots and turf. Her aunt had merely dug it out again and repaired the chimney. The window and door, framed in ready openings, were new, along with stout ceiling beams. Nothing more. It was a place that perhaps ten people knew of, and nine avoided. She stood unresolved, chafing the arms of her dress, unable to keep warm. But at that moment a solitary figure came up the path towards her, and she recognized the shawl and bound hair of her aunt, stooped beneath a large bundle of sticks. "Inside with you, lass," said the woman evenly, again not evincing the least surprise. "You'll catch your death." "Let me help you with your load," the girl offered. "I can quite carry my own burden, Mary. Just open the door for me; I'll walk through it." Mary did as she asked. They went inside. The single room was dark and low-ceilinged, with no light but the hearth fire, which played strange shadows across the rough stones and wooden bracings. Herbs, tools and utensils, bizarre talismans hung from the walls. The floor was of solid earth. A wooden table and chair, two frameless beds, an ancient rocking chair---there were no other furnishings. "Sit by the fire, child, and wrap a blanket around you. I'll have the tea....." But studying her face more closely, the old woman put a hand to her forehead, and could not entirely suppress a look of concern. "Into bed with you, Mary, you're burning with fever." And she quickly arranged warm coverings for the thin, down mattress, which lay on a jutting shelf of stone covered with straw, and threw more wood on the fire. Soon the room was warm, and in its primitive way, quite comfortable. Mary lay in the bed, her shivering stopped, and the herb tea that her aunt had given her calming her nerves. But still there were the questions that would not rest. "Aunt Margaret," she began pensively, eyes glittering. "You quarreled with mother, and now she can bear her cross no longer, and she says you must tell me everything." Though the sentence was hardly coherent, the old woman nodded her understanding. She came and sat on the bed, taking the young girl's hand in her own.