The daylight lingered as if loth to leave them. There was the fluttering of wings overhead, and sometimes the last piping of birds. The wind wandered away, and left their voices sovereign of all the air. Then there came a distant shout; the cheer of the farm people on reaching home with the Melliah.. It awakened Philip as from a fit of intoxication. “This is madness,” he thought. “What am I doing?” “He is going to speak now,” she told herself. Her gaiety shaded off into melancholy, and her melancholy burst into wild gaiety again. The night had come down, the moon had risen, the stars had appeared. She crept closer to Philip's side, and began to tell him the story of a witch. They were near to the house the witch had lived in. There it was--that roofless cottage--that tholthan under the deep trees like a dungeon. “Have you never heard of her, Philip? No? The one they called the Deemster's lady?” “What Deemster?” said Philip. “This one, Deemster Mylrea, who is said to be dying.” “He is dying; he is killing himself; I saw him to-day,' said Philip. “'Well, she was the blacksmith's daughter, and he left her, and she went mad and cursed him, and said she was his wife though they hadn't been to church, and he should never marry anybody else. Then her father turned her out, and she came up here all alone, and there was a baby, and they were saying she killed it, and everybody was afraid of her. And all the time her boy was making himself a great, great man until he got to be Deemster. But he never married, never, though times and times people were putting this lady on him and then that; but when they told the witch, she only laughed and said, 'Let him, he'll get lave enough!' At last she was old and going on two sticks, and like to die any day, and then he crept out of his big house unknown to any one and stole up here to the woman's cottage. And when she saw the old man she said, 'So you've come at last, boy; but you've been keeping me long, bogh, you've been keeping me long.' And then she died. Wasn't that strange?” Her dark eyes looked up at him and her mouth quivered. “Was it witchcraft, then?” said Philip. “Oh, no; it was only because he was her husband. That was the hold she had of him. He was tempted away by a big house and a big name, but he _had_ to come back to her. And it's the same with a woman. Once a girl is the wife of somebody, she _must_ cling to him, and if she is ever false she must return. Something compels her. That's if she's really his wife--really, truly. How beautiful, isn't it? Isn't it beautiful?” “Do you think that, Kate? Do you think a man, like a woman, would cling the closer?” “He couldn't help himself, Philip.”