The Macruadh set down the creel, and taking out peat after peat, piled them up against the wall, where already a good many waited their turn to be laid on the fire; for, as the old woman said, she must carry a few when she could, and get ahead with her store ere the winter came, or she would soon be devoured: there was a death that always prowled about old people, she said, watching for the fire to go out. Many of the Celts are by nature poets, and mistress Conal often spoke in a manner seldom heard from the lips of a lowland woman. The common forms of Gaelic are more poetic than those of most languages, and could have originated only with a poetic people, while mistress Conal was by no means an ordinary type of her people; maugre her ill temper and gruffness, she thought as well as spoke like a poetess. This, conjoined with the gift of the second sight, had helped to her reputation as a witch. As the chief piled the peats, he counted them. She sat watching him and them from a stone that made part of a rude rampart to the hearth. "I told you so, Macruadh!" she said, the moment she saw his hand return empty from the bottom of the creel. "I was positive there should be three more!--But what's on the road is not with the devil." "I am very sorry!" said the chief, who thought it wiser not to contradict her. He would have searched his sporan for a coin to make up to her for the supposed loss of her peats; but he knew well enough there was not a coin in it. He shook hands with her, bade her good night, and went, closing the door carefully behind him against a great gust of wind that struggled to enter, threatening to sweep the fire she was now blowing at with her wrinkled, leather-like lips, off the hearth altogether--a thing that had happened before, to the danger of the whole building, itself of the substance burning in the middle of its floor. The Macruadh ran down the last few steep steps of the path, and jumped into the road. Through the darkness came the sound of one springing aside with a great start, and the click of a gun-lock. "Who goes there?" cried a rather tremulous voice. "The Macruadh," answered the chief. The utterance apparently conveyed nothing. "Do you belong to these parts?" said the voice. A former Macruadh might have answered, "No; these parts belong to me;" Alister curtly replied, "I do." "Here then, my good fellow! take my game-bag, and carry it as far as the New House--if you know where I mean. I will give you a shilling." One moment the chief spent in repressing a foolish indignation; the next he spent in reflection.