"'What mak's ye lauch sae wide at puir Gibbie?' "'The Grave!' says he. He hadna muckle to say, but syne he steppit nearer nearer to the bedside. "'What made that great muckle hole in your side?' "'You made it!' cried the ghaist, loupin' at Gibbie's throat; an' puir Gib kenned nae mair." And even as the monster shouted out the last words--the words of the spectre of his cannibal vision--Gash Gibbie seemed to us to dilate and lean forward to spring upon us. The wild-fire reeled about as though the very elements were drunken, and Wat and I fairly turned and fled, shouting insanely with terror as we ran--leaving the silent stricken witch with the face of blood, and the misshapen elf, her hell's brood progeny, raving and shouting on the hillside--these two alone at midnight in the "Nick of the Deid Wife." "Aye, rin, rin," we heard him call after us. "Rin fast, and Yon will maybe no' catch ye--till it is your hour!" And truly Wat and I did run in earnest, stumbling and crying out in our terror--now falling and now getting up, then falling to the running again without a single reasonable word. But as we came hot-foot over the Rig of Lochricaur, we seemed to run into the sheeted rain. For where we had been hitherto, only the blue dry fire had ringed us, but here we ran into a downpour as though the fountains of the deep of heaven had broken up and were falling in a white spate upon the world. We were wet, weary, and terrified, more than we had ever been in our lives, before we reached the hermitage of the cave of Macaterick. There we found the women waiting for us, listening fearfully to the roar of the storm without, and hearkening in the lown blinks to Auld Anton Lennox praying--while the lightning seemed to run into the cave, and shine on the blade of the sword he held gripped in his right hand. So we stripped our wet clothes, and lay in the outer place all the night, where there was a fire of red peats, while the women withdrew themselves into their inner sanctuary. I could see the anxiety in their eyes when we came in, for they could not but discern the ghastly terror in our faces. But without any agreement between ourselves, Wat and I silently resolved that we should not acquaint any of the party with the hideous judgments of that night, to which we had been eye-witnesses. CHAPTER XLIV. A DESIRABLE GENERAL MEETING. The next morning dawned colder and more chilly. The catch of the autumn of the year was in the air, and it nipped shrewdly till the sun looked over the hills in the east. This was to be the great day of the Societies' general meeting, which had been summoned in the wilds of Shalloch-on-Minnoch.[10]