"Then," said Neil, "the salt wave went out of his eyes and he knew me, and fell on his knees, and wept, and said he was dying of an old broken love. And with that he ran down to the shore, and lifted a palmful of water to his lips, so that for a moment foam hung upon his tangled beard, and called out to his love, and was sore bitter upon her, and then up and laughed and scrambled out of sight, though I heard him crying among the rocks." I asked Neil who the One-Eyed Watcher was. He said he was a man who had never died and never lived. He had only one eye, but that could see through anything except grey granite, the grey crow's egg, and the grey wave that swims at the bottom. He could see the dead in the water, and watched for them: he could see those on the land who came down near the sea, if they had death on them. On these he had no pity. But he was unseen except at dusk and in the grey dawn. He came out of a grave. He was not a man, but he lived upon the deaths of men. It was worse to be alive, and see him, than to be dead and at his feet. When the man Anndra's madness went away from him--sometimes in a week or two weeks, sometimes not for three weeks or more--he would come back across the hill. In the dark he would slip down through the bracken and bog-myrtle, and wait a while among the ragged fuchsias at the dyke of his potato-patch. Then he would creep in at the window of his room, or perhaps lift the door-latch and go quietly to his bed. Once Neil was there when he returned. Neil was speaking to Anndra's sister, who kept house for the poor man. They heard a noise, and the sudden flurried clucking of hens. "It's Anndra," said the woman, with a catch in her throat; and they sat in silence, till the door opened. He had been away five weeks, and hair and beard were matted, and his face was death-white; but he had already slipped into his habitual clothes, and looked the quiet respectable man he was. The two who were waiting for him did not speak. "It's a fine night," he said; "it's a fine night, an' no wind.--Marget, it's time we had in mair o' thae round cheeses fra Inverary." EARTH, FIRE, AND WATER In "The Sea-Madness" I have told of a man--a quiet dull man, a chandler of a little Argyll loch-town--who, at times, left his counter, and small canny ways, and went out into a rocky wilderness, and became mad with the sea. I have heard of many afflicted in some such wise, and have known one or two.