sinuous things of the grass and heather and the shadowy pool. They, too, I thought, were furtive and sinister. There was something as of the same evil enchantment in their abrupt and inexplicable appearing and in their soundless departures. Thus it was I felt no surprise when my old island-friend Sheumais remarked to me: “They are creatures of the sea.” “What are they, Sheumais?” I urged; “are they great eels, or adders, or what? Can they put death on a swimmer? Have you ever caught one? Have----” “Ay, for sure they might put death on a swimmer: and by the same token I will be remembering that Rùaridh Stewart, the Appin poet, has a _rann_ about them as the Hounds of the Sea.” “And have they names?” “For sure, that: _Luath_ (Swift) and _Gorm-Dhu_ (Blue-Black), _Luath-Donn_ (Fleet-brown-one) and _Braco_ (Speckled), _Rùn-fo-tuinne_ (Underwave Secret) and _Cu-Bhais_ (Hound of Death), and others that I will be forgetting.” “But, Sheumais,” I persisted, “are they male-seafolk and women-seafolk like the seals, and have they little ones, and where do they go, and where do the big tides come from?” “Well, well, I will not be knowing that, though, for sure, it is likely. But as to where they come from, and where they go, there will be none in all the world who can tell that; no, not one. They will be just like the wind, that no one knows the road of, behind or before. Ay, the sea’s just like the grey road: the green road an’ the grey road, they show no tracks. The wind an’ the tides, they just come an’ they just go. ‘Blind as the wind,’ ‘blind as the tide’ ... ay, it may be; but not so blind as we are, for they know their way, an’ brightest noon an’ darkest night, an’ summer an’ winter, an’ calm an’ storm, are one an’ the same to them.” It is long ago now since I heard these words from old Sheumais Macleod, but I am certain (so deeply did they impress my childish imagination, and sink into a child’s mind) that I repeat them almost exactly. I had no hesitation in believing in _Gorm-Dhu_ and _Luath-Donn_, and the rest, and took these names to be real names of actual creatures, as _Daoine-Vhara_ (folk of the sea) for seals, or as _piocach_ for the brown saithe I was wont to watch swimming amid the fronds of the seaweed, or as _sgàdan_ for the flashing herring whose shoals so often made a dazzle in the offing beyond the strait, and whose radiant scales glorified as with gems the nets hauled up in the moonshine or in the pale rose and cowslip-yellow of August dawns.