"Yes," he said, "I have heard of the _uisge-each_" (the sea-beast, sea-kelpie, or water-horse), "but I have never seen it with the eyes. My father and my brother knew of it. But this thing I know, and this what we call _an-cailleach-uisge_" (the siren or water-witch); "the _cailliach_, mind you, not the _maighdeann-mhàra_" (the mermaid), "who means no harm. May she hear my saying it! The cailliach is old and clad in weeds, but her voice is young, and she always sits so that the light is in the eyes of the beholder. She seems to him young also, and fair. She has two familiars in the form of seals, one black as the grave, and the other white as the shroud that is in the grave; and these sometimes upset a boat, if the sailor laughs at the uisge-cailliach's song. "A man netted one of those seals, more than a hundred years ago, with his herring-trawl, and dragged it into the boat; but the other seal tore at the net so savagely, with its head and paws over the bows, that it was clear no net would long avail. The man heard them crying and screaming, and then talking low and muttering, like women in a frenzy. In his fear he cast the nets adrift, all but a small portion that was caught in the thwarts. Afterwards, in this portion, he found a tress of woman's hair. And that is just so: to the Stones be it said. "The grandson of this man, Tomais McNair, is still living, a shepherd on Eilean-Uamhain, beyond Lunga in the Cairnburg Isles. A few years ago, off Callachan Point, he saw the two seals, and heard, though he did not see, the cailliach. And that which I tell you,--Christ's Cross before me--is a true thing." All the time that Padruic was speaking I saw that Ivor McLean looked away: either as though he heard nothing, or did not wish to hear. There was dream in his eyes; I saw that, so said nothing for a time. "What is it, Ivor?" I asked at last, in a low voice. He started, and looked at me strangely. "What will you be asking that for? What are you doing in my mind, that is secret?" "I see that you are brooding over something. Will you not tell me?" "Tell her," said Padruic quietly. But Ivor kept silent. There was a look in his eyes which I understood. Thereafter we sailed on, with no word in the boat at all. That night, a dark, rainy night it was, with an uplift wind beating high over against the hidden moon, I went to the cottage where Ivor McLean lived with his old deaf mother,--deaf nigh upon twenty years, ever since the night of the nights when she heard the women whisper that Callum, her husband, was among the drowned, after a death-wind had blown. When I entered, he was sitting before the flaming coal-fire; for on Iona, now, by decree of MacCailin Mòr, there is no more peat burned. "You will tell me now, Ivor?" was all I said.