"The laddie gave one low scream, like somebody in a nightmare. Then his father seized him, and oh! they say it was dismal to hear the howls of the poor laddie and the sound o' the fearfu' blows. "Corbie didn't appear again for many a day, but the human heart must have society, and by degrees Corbie commenced story-telling again, but no' in the kirk-yard, only down in a thicket by the riverside, and always when there, some one was put to watch. "I often passed that house, even at night, though the name it had now was worse and worse. "I had used to have business at T--, across the hills. "But so bad a name did that road get, that even by day the boldest would hardly venture to take the short cut to T--up along the laird's march dyke. Belated travellers saw lights--dead candles they called them-- flitting and flickering around the fairy knoll. Brownies and spunkies, they said, were met on the moor, and down by the riverside Kelpie himsel' was often visible." [Kelpie, in Scotch folklore a kind of bogle, half man, half bat, often seen by midnight near the banks of ugly rivers. He lives in deep, dark pools.] "A sturdy shepherd that had stayed too long at T--had met Kelpie, so they said; he was found next day cut and bleeding at the water-side, and was a raving maniac for weeks. "One day I was setting out for the seaside village--I was young then, and strong--when near the clachan I met McCaskill. "`Can I trust ye,' he said, `to deliver a letter at the Mill House?' "I was feared to offend by refusing, so I took it. But lo! I forgot it a'thegither till I was coming hame. It was night, too, but deliver it I must. "I took the road alang the auld march dyke across the hills. The moon was shining, but no' very brightly, givin' a feeble yellow kind o' a licht through a haze o' drivin' clouds. "Well, I was just near the dreariest part o' the upper glen, and no' far from the fairy knoll. I was wishing I were well past it, and away down to the clachan, where I could see the lights blinking cheerily from the houses among the trees. "I was hurrying on, when suddenly, with an eldritch scream, something in white sprang from behind an etnach," (juniper) "bush. "I was a bold lass. Some would have fainted. My heart was in my mouth, but I felt impelled to throw myself at the thing, whatever it was. I rushed forward with a frightened shriek and grasped it. I wheeled its face towards the moon, and what think you saw I?" "A brownie!" said Dugald. "Oh, Grannie, I'm all of a quiver." "He was no brownie. Only the auld, auld-fashioned face o' little Corbie." "`Let me go, Nancy. Let me go,' he pleaded. `My father would kill me if he knew I was found out.' "He wriggled out o' my hands and fled, and I hardly felt the ground beneath my feet till I reached the low end o' the glen and found myself opposite the gate o' Mill House. "Then I remembered the letter. "Dare I deliver it?