"Very well, what then?" Duncan cried irately. "I hear they are to be married when he comes back. What else, mother?" Catriona had dropped her potatoes into the pot, and she swung it over the open peats, glowing redly in the dark little cottage. "Well, if I were you, Duncan, I would get out the boat, and I would offer to take her to the cave. And I will be telling her more stories to-night, when we are spinning. The lass is a changeling, sure enough, and she will go. When Rory comes back, he will hear, and he will be mad with her, and they will quarrel. You can go over to Uig that day" ("Discretion being the better part of valour," evidently, in Catriona's eyes). "They will quarrel, and will break it off, and she will come to you, in time." Duncan considered the plan slowly. Yes, it suited him excellently well. He wanted no noisy quarrel, no measuring of strength. He, too, remembered Rory's muscles at the Portree games. But this secret working in the dark, in MacPhee's absence, was quite to his taste. He made up his mind now that his mother was a woman of much wisdom. He graciously told her he approved, and she should have a little present on his next trip to Portree. Her stories to Ishbel of the cave were to be many and enticing! CHAPTER III. IN THE CAVE OF GOLD. "Duncan, Duncan, but I hef promised!" It was the next night, and Ishbel stood before the cottage in her dark wincey skirt and green cotton jacket, her face turned up to her cousin's. All last night, all through the day, old Catriona's stories had haunted her. The old woman had gone cunningly to work. She began, in a rambling way, once they were both seated at the spinning-wheel, by remarking that to-morrow would be Midsummer's Night, and the fairies would be holding high frolic in the Cave of Gold. She herself was old, and frail, and feeble, else how gladly would she have gone! She had the second sight--she would perhaps see what no other could! For, with a branch of rowan--and she had a branch of dry rowan in her kist, ready for her burial--or a naked dagger--Duncan's big knife would do--there was no danger! To see the little green folk dancing! And--here her voice fell, and she glanced into all the dark shadows of the kitchen, and up by the oak settle near the window--perhaps to hear the faint and far-off skirl of Angus Macdonald's pipes! They said that sound was heard still. At first Ishbel had risen uneasily, saying she would go and see if there were enough oat-cakes for supper--or was that anyone in the barn?