That passionate protest of the soul against the absolute unheed of nature was hers: that already defeated revolt of the whirling leaf against the soaring, far-come, far-going wind that knows nothing of what happens beneath it in the drift of its inevitable passage. With a sob, she turned, vaguely yearning for the human peace that abode in the cottage. As she moved, she saw a shadow, solidly clear-cut in the moonlight, sweep from a rock close by, as though it were a swinging scythe. Instinctively she glanced upward, to see if the cloud-counterpart were overhead. The sky was now cloudless: neither passing vapour nor travelling wild-swan had made that shadow leap from the smooth boulder into the darkness. She trembled: for she feared she had seen the Watcher of the Dead. At the wane of the last moon, an old islesman had passed into the white sleep. Lora knew that his spirit would have to become the Watcher of Graves till such time as another soul should lapse into the silence. Was this he, she wondered with instinctive dread--was this Fergus, weary of his vigil, errant about the isle which had been the world to him, a drifting shadow from graveyard to byre and sheiling, from fold to dark fold, from the clachan-end to the shore-pastures, from coble to havened coble, from the place of the boats to the ferry-rock? Did he know that he would soon have one to take over from him his dreadful peace? Or was he in no satiate peace, but anhungered as a beast of prey for the death of another? And then ... and then ... who was this other? Who next upon the isle would be the Watcher of the Dead? With a low, shuddering breath, she sighed, "_Fergus!_" The fall of her voice through the silence was an echo of terror. She clasped her hands across her breast. Her body swayed forward as a bulrush before the wind. "_Ah, Dia! Dia!_" broke from her lips; for, beyond all doubt, she saw once again the moving of a darkness within the dark. Yet what she saw was no shadow-man weary of last vigil, but something that for a moment filled her with the blindness of dread. Was it possible? Was she waylaid by one of those terrible dwellers in twilight-water of which she had heard so often from the tellers of old tales? "_Toradh nu féudalach gun am faicinn_," she muttered with cold lips: "the offspring of the cattle that have not been seen!" "Ah, no, no!" she cried. The next moment, and with a sob of relief, she saw a moonbeam steal upon the hollow and reveal its quietude of dusk. She would have moved at once from boulder to boulder, eager for that lost sanctuary whence she had come--when the very pulse of her heart sprang to the burst of a human sob close by. She stood still, as though frozen. A moment before, the breath from her lips was visible: now not the faintest vapour melted into the night-air. Was she dreaming, she wondered, when the stifling grip at her heart had mercifully relaxed?