For some moments there was absolute silence. Then a hoarse voice came out of the dark. “You will be knowing now who it is, Gloom Achanna!” The voice was that of Sheumais, who lay dead in the lochan. The murderer shook as in a palsy. With a great effort, slowly he turned his head. He saw a white splatch--the face of the corpse. In this white splatch flamed two burning eyes, the eyes of the soul of the brother whom he had slain. He reeled, staggered as a blind man, and, free now of that awful clasp, swayed to and fro as one drunken. Slowly Sheumais raised an arm, and pointed downward through the wood towards the lochan. Still pointing, he moved swiftly forward. With a cry like a beast, Gloom Achanna swung to one side, stumbled, rose, and leaped into the darkness. For some minutes Sheumais and Katreen stood, silent, apart, listening to the crashing sound of his flight--the race of the murderer against the pursuing shadow of the Grave. _THE ARCHER_ THE ARCHER The man who told me this thing was Coll McColl, an islander of Barra, in the Southern Hebrides. He spoke in the Gaelic, and it was while he was mending his net; and by the same token I thought at the time that his words were like herring-fry in that net, some going clean through, and others sticking fast by the gills. So I do not give it exactly as I heard it, but in substance as Coll gave it. He is dead now, and has perhaps seen the Archer. Coll was a poet, and the island-folk said he was mad: but this was only because he loved beyond the reach of his fate. * * * * * There were two men who loved one woman. It is of no mere girl with the fair looks upon her I am speaking, but of a woman, that can put the spell over two men. The name of the woman was Silis: the names of the men were Sheumas and Isla. Silis was the wife of Sheumas. So Sheumas had his home, for her breast was his pillow when he willed it: and he had her voice for daily music: and his eyes had never any thirst, for they could drink of her beauty by day and by night. But Isla had no home. He saw his home afar off, and his joy and his strength failed, because the shining lights of it were not for him. One night the two men were upon the water. It was a dead calm, and the nets had been laid. There was no moon at all, and only a star or two up in the black corner of the sky. The sea had the wandering flames in it: and when the big jellyfish floated by, they were like the tide-lamps that some are for saying the dead bear on their drowned faces. “Some day I may be telling you a strange thing, Sheumas,” said Isla, after the long silence there had been since the last net had sent a little cloud of sparkles up from the gulfs.