But Catriona bade her be seated, sharply--the girl should not escape her thus--and then she asked if she (Catriona) had ever told Ishbel the story of Angus Macdonald and the Cave of Gold? No, Ishbel answered unwillingly, and sat down again, the wheel idle, the soft grey carded wool lying in her lap. Catriona, spinning fast--with the low dirl of the wheel acting as a sort of accompaniment to her voice--told the story. She spoke in Gaelic, of course, and it is difficult to put in English the creeping, insidious fear and mystery of the tale. How the piper, Angus Macdonald, loved a MacLeod of Dunvegen, a follower of the great MacLeod, and how this lady-love's father would have none of him, but set him some of those foolish and impossible tasks so dear to the story-teller of all ages and climes and nationalities. One task bade him enter the Cave of Gold at midnight, on Midsummer's Night, and play "MacLeod of Dunvegen," passing through the little dancing folk, and penetrating far into the mystery of the cave's windings, where no Skye man had ever been. Macdonald, of course, took up the challenge, and with his tartan ribbands waving wildly from the pipes, and the mouth-piece at his lips, he was seen standing at the shingly edge of the cave, his kilt tossing against his brown knees in the sudden gust of wind. The men who rowed him up saw this, and heard the first wild pealing notes. Thus, playing proudly and happily, he entered the cave with his dog at his heels. They waited and watched, and listened, and at last heard one awful cry! Then there was silence. He had passed the fairies, but-- "Never home came he!" Then, changing her tone, Catriona told of the only woman who had ever caught sight of the wee green folk, and how, ever after, riches and wealth were hers, and she had never a wish unsatisfied! It was the going on into the inner caves that had undone the piper! The lass who had seen the fairies was a certain Eilidh Macdonald, and she married a chief, and went to live far away in Oban, and all her days she was clad in green silk. Yes, all her days! "How did she go?" Ishbel cried. "In a boat, with a man. It is easy, if the man is strong, and you hef the rowan with you. Last of all, Eilidh died, and she wished to be buried beside Flora Macdonald's granite cross at Kilmuir, and they granted her even that! She lies near the great Flora, who saved the Prince. And all through seeing the wee green folk in the Cave of Gold!" "Grandmother, would you lend me the rowan branch if--if I were to go?" Ishbel whispered in the dusk. "Would you, grandmother?" Her own voice seemed to terrify her then, and Rory's face rose up before her; but the old woman got up without a word, and, going to her kist, took something, rolled in a fine kerchief, from it, with the smell of bog-myrtle in its folds, and she laid the brown faded leaves and the red, dry berries on Ishbel's lap. "There it is! But you will give it me back safe?--or else ill will befall us all!"