"Fatality compels me," said the captain, mournfully and wildly. "Oh, how few could comprehend the misery of a conviction like this! Fain would I give up _existence_ if I could receive oblivion in exchange, but not life--_this_ life at least. Fain would I rest in my grave, Hamish; but in the grave, even of a saint--yea, under the altar-stone of Iona--I could not find repose." "I do not understand all this," said the old sergeant, solemnly; "so let us consult the minister about it." "The minister--bah!" "You never feared death, Ballychroan?" "Death--no! for he has everywhere eluded me. You have seen me rush into the breach amid a thousand dangers, and escape them all. I have flung myself upon the levelled bayonets, and among the uplifted swords of the enemy; but the bayonets became pointless, the swords blunted, the bullets harmless as snow-flakes! In the dark vault of the Vizie, the flames spared me; even the ocean itself repelled me, when three hundred brave men went down into its greedy gulf; and, like he who wanders for ever--he who mocked his Saviour on the ascent to Calvary--I seem to bear a charmed life; but yet, like that more happy wretch, I cannot live for ever. No, Hamish, no--my days are numbered!" "Go not forth to-day," reiterated the old soldier, grasping the arm of the excited captain. "Bah!" he responded, and drained another glass of whiskey. "What did Kenneth Ower foretel two hundred years ago?" "That when a _black_ Yule overtook a _black_ Laird of Ballychroan, the race would cease." "Well--you are the first of your family who have the name of Evan _Dhu_--and you have no son." "Thank Heaven, no! I care not for predictions, and Kenneth Ower Mackenzie, the Brahn prophet, was a fool." "He foretold strange things though." "Such as, that oats would replace the fairies on the hill of Tomnahourich, and that ships with sails unfurled would pass and repass it; but the green bracken and the purple heather wave yet on the Fairies' Hill, and we hare heard nothing of the ships."* * The captain spoke in 1800. "Tomnahourich, the far-famed Fairies' Hill, has been sown with oats," states the _Inverness Advertiser_ of 1859; "according to tradition, the Brahn prophet, who lived 200 years ago, predicted that ships with unfurled sails would pass and repass Tomnahourich; and further, that it would yet be placed under lock and key. The first part of the prediction was verified by the opening of the Caledonian Canal, and we seem to be on the eve of seeing the realization of the rest by the final closing up of the Fairies' Hill." In what succeeds I have closely followed local and oral tradition; but the black officer was _not_ the last of his race, as he left a daughter, who, I believe, was married in England. "Kenneth Ower never spoke in vain," said the white-haired sergeant.