"Oich! oich!" grumbled Farquhar, "I would as readily have had the devil as this ugly hag. I have got a shelter, certainly; but with her 'tis out of the cauldron and into the fire. Had she been a brown-eyed lass, to a share of my plaid she had been welcome; but this wrinkled cailloch----down, Bran, down!" he added aloud, as the strong hound strained in his collar, and tasked his master's hand and arm to keep him from springing at the intruder. "Is this kind or manly of you," she asked, "to keep a wild brute that behaves thus, and to a woman too? Turn him out into the storm; the wind and rain will soon cool his wicked blood." "Thank you; but in that you must excuse me. Bran and I are as brothers." "Turn him out, I say," screamed the hag, "or worse may befall him!" "I shall not turn him out, woman," said Farquhar, firmly, while surveying the stranger with some uneasiness; for, to his startled gaze, she seemed to have grown _taller_ within the last five minutes. "You have a share of our shelter, and you have had all our supper; but to turn out poor Bran--no, no, that would never do." To this Bran added a roar of rage, and the fear or fury which blazed in the eyes of the woman fully responded to those, of the now infuriated staghound. The glances of each made those of the other more and more fierce. "Down, Bran; down, I say," said Farquhar. "What the devil hath possessed the dog? I never saw him behave thus before. He must be savage, mother, that you left him none of the savoury venison steak; for all the supper we had was that road-collop from one of MacGillony's brown cattle." "MacGillony," muttered the hag, spreading her talon-like hands over the embers; "I knew him well." "You!" exclaimed Farquhar. "I have said so," she replied with a grin. "He was a mighty hunter five hundred years ago, who lived and died on the Grampians!" "And what are five hundred years, to me, who saw the waters of the deluge pour through Corriehoilzie, and subside from the slope of Ben Nevis?" "This is a very good joke, mother," said poor Farquhar, attempting to laugh, while the hideous old woman, who was so small when he first saw her as to be almost a dwarf, was now, palpably, veritably, and without doubt, nearly a head taller than himself; and watchfully he continued to gaze on her, keeping one hand on his dirk and the other on the collar of Bran, whose growls were louder now than the storm that careered through the rocky glen below. "Woman!" said Farquhar, boldly, "my mind misgives me--there is something about you that I little like; I have just had a dreadful dream." "A morning dream, too!" chuckled the hag with an elfish grin. "So I connect your presence here with it." "Be it so." "What may that terrible dream foretell?" pondered Farquhar; "for morning dreams are but warnings and presages unsolved. The blessings of God and all his saints be about me!" At these words the beldame uttered a loud laugh.