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WITCH OF THE GLENS

by

SALLY WATSON

Drawings by Barbara Werner

The Viking Press
New York

Copyright © 1962 by Sally Watson
All rights reserved
First published in 1962 by The Viking Press, Inc.
625 Madison Avenue, New York 22, N. Y.
Published simultaneously in Canada
by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited

Library of Congress catalog card number: 62-17071

Printed in the U.S.A. by the Vail-Ballou Press, Inc.

To my favorite witch and _uruisg_ Jean and Don and their two small
kelpies Kathy and Mark

Contents

     1. The Gypsies                           15

     2. The Waif                              26

     3. Glenfern                              36

     4. The Daft Folk                         48

     5. Bewitchery                            60

     6. The Picture in the Loch               73

     7. The Return of Mina and Bogle          88

     8. A Task for Kelpie                    102

     9. Inverary Castle                      115

    10. A Bit of Hair                        124

    11. Argyll’s Dungeon                     135

    12. Meeting at Pitlochry                 146

    13. The Hexing of Alex                   159

    14. The Battle of Tippermuir             170

    15. Witch Hunt                           182

    16. Morag Mhor                           195

    17. The Road to Inverary                 206

    18. The Black Sail                       223

    19. Footprints in the Snow               229

    20. The Campbell Lass                    240

    21. Vengeance                            250

    22. The Last Word                        261

Gaelic Terms

    _Amadain_ (masculine, _amadan_). Fool.

    _Briosag._ Witch, sorceress.

    _Chlanna nan con, thigibh a sh’s gheibh sibh feoil._ “Sons of
    the dogs, come hither, and you shall have flesh” (Cameron war
    cry).

    _Dhia dhuit._ A greeting (“good day,” literally, “God today”).

    _Droch-inntinneach._ Evil-minded.

    _Dubh_ (also _dhu_). Black.

    _Each uisghe._ Water horse (mythical sea-monster, probably with
    some connection to the Loch Ness Monster, which has been seen
    frequently for at least 1500 years and to which Saint Columba
    of Iona gave a good scolding in 565, as recorded by the Abbot
    of Iona).

    _Filleadh mór._ The great-plaid, kilt and plaid in one piece.
    (The plaid, or plaidie, was worn around the shoulders and
    sometimes over the head.)

    _Ghillie._ An attendant or follower of a clan chief or
    chieftain.

    _Kelpie._ A water witch.

    _Mallaichte._ Wicked.

    _M’eudain._ An endearment.

    _Mise-an-dhuit._ An exclamation (literally, “Me today!”).

    _Mo chridhe._ An endearment (literally, “My heart”).

    _Mo thruigh._ An exclamation (literally, “My sorrow!”).

    _Mor_ (or _mhor_). Great, large.

    _Nathrach._ Serpent.

    _Seach._ Interjection: “Yes?” “Well—” “Truly!” “Really?”

    _Sgian dhu._ Black knife: a small dagger usually worn in the
    top of the right stocking by men, just below the knee on the
    outside, where it is most convenient to reach.

    _Slaoightire._ Scoundrel.

    _Uruisg_ (plural, _uruisgean_). A hobgoblin; sometimes thought
    to be half human, half hobgoblin. A most disagreeable fellow,
    in any case.

Pronouncing Gaelic

Gaelic pronunciation is in some ways totally different from English.
For instance, _s_ in front of _i_ or _e_ sounds like _sh_; _th_, _bh_,
_dh_, and _gh_ are sometimes (but not always) silent; _mh_ is usually
pronounced _v_; and _ch_ has a sound not found in English at all, and
made by trying to say _kh_ as far back in the throat as possible.

_Following are the pronunciations for some of the names and words found
in this book_:

    dubh—doo

    each uisghe—ekh oosh-ga (“oo” as in “look”)

    Eithne—Ay-na

    Ewen—Yew-en

    ghillie—gilly

    Hamish—Hay-mish

    Ian—Ee-an

    Lachlan—Lakh-lan

    Loch Leven—Lokh Leeven

    Mairi—Mah-ri

    mhor—vore

    mo chridhe—mo cree

    Seumas—Shay-mas (James)

    sgian dhu—skean doo

    uruisg—oorishk

Historical Note

To avoid confusion I have in this book described clan tartans more or
less as they exist today. This is not strictly accurate. To begin with,
in 1644 clans had not yet adopted specific tartans to be worn by all
their members, and probably none of the tartans were the same, in either
pattern or color, as they are today. In fact, it is very difficult to
know just what they did look like, for all kinds of vegetable dyes were
used, and the remnants of old tartans that we find today are so faded and
changed in color that they seem mostly gray or gray-brown, and it is hard
to tell what colors they once were.

Witch of the Glens

[Illustration: THE PART OF _SCOTLAND_ WHERE KELPIE’S ADVENTURE TOOK
PLACE]

1. The Gypsies

The people of Inverness were deeply annoyed. A number of them stood
in the square and scowled with great hostility at the three tattered
wanderers in their midst—but their anger held a wary quality.

“Tinklers! Gypsies!” they cried accusingly, and the soft, sibilant sound
of the Gaelic was less soft but more sibilant than usual. “_Briosag!_”
(“Witch!”) muttered some with conviction but caution. “Thieves!” they
added, getting to the real heart of the annoyance. And with this fresh
reminder of their grievances they began picking up stones as they
advanced toward the man, woman, and girl.

Anyone who expected to see clan loyalty in this gypsy family would have
been terribly disappointed. The massive bent shoulders and stringy legs
of the man somehow evaporated between two houses, and the final glance
from his pasty dark face was one of hooded derision.

Old Mina Faw didn’t seem at all put out by her man’s desertion. One
might have thought she had expected it. Her scrawny figure seemed to grow
taller as she turned a once-handsome hag face toward the crowd, and her
sunken pale eyes flashed. The crowd hesitated. Everyone knew Old Mina was
a witch, with the most devastating Evil Eye in all Scotland.

But surprisingly Mina chose to pacify them. After all, there weren’t many
towns in the Highlands in this year of 1644, and it was well not to be
alienating those few too deeply. “Och, now!” She wheedled the crowd in
her thin but powerful voice. “Ye wouldn’t be wishing to harm a poor old
woman, now, would ye?”

It wasn’t at all that they weren’t wishing to harm her. But no one wanted
to risk having his hands fall off or his cattle die. They regarded her
dubiously, making up their minds. “Witch!” repeated someone from the
safety of the back. “Thief!” cried several more with fresh indignation,
and they began to move forward again.

“Thief?” echoed Mina indignantly. “Not I! I would only be reading your
palms and telling good fortune for ye. If anyone has been lifting
your belongings, it must be my wicked wee Kelpie, whom I am beating
every night for her sins.” And she pointed accusingly at an undersized
goblin-lass who might have been perhaps fifteen or seventeen years old,
dressed in an outrageous assortment of faded scraps. Long black elf-locks
flapped about her thin face and down her back. Eyes that were not quite
canny peered out like those of an alarmed wee beast—or a witch.

The “wicked wee Kelpie” didn’t stay to dispute the issue. With one
bright, mutinous glance at Mina, she dived through the startled fringe of
the crowd like a young stoat and ran away into the narrow steep lanes of
the town.

The Inverness crowd promptly forgot Mina and took after the lass.
“Thief!” they yelled with new enthusiasm. And whatever was convenient to
pick up, they threw.

It was fortunate that Kelpie was experienced in this sort of thing, for
it was a nasty chase, and she knew all too well what might happen if they
caught her. With cunning amounting to sheer genius she ran and dodged,
doubled back and forth between houses, wriggled over and under and around
obstacles. Now and then her intense small face broke into a pointed
grin of appreciation at her own cleverness—for there was something
exhilarating in outwitting an entire town—but very real fear lurked
behind those uncanny blue eyes. To tell the truth, it was the tide of ill
will surging behind her which oppressed her even more than the stones.
But Kelpie did not realize this, for she was so used to ill will that she
could not remember anything else.

As for Mina’s deplorable behavior, Kelpie was annoyed but not in the
least astonished. Mina had merely followed the law of self-preservation,
the only law Kelpie knew. She herself would do the same thing, given the
chance. It was the only way to stay alive.

“_Briosag!_ Witch!”

Kelpie swerved round a corner and wished that she _were_ a witch. If so,
she wouldn’t be running now but putting a braw spell on them all, causing
their legs to buckle under them and stay that way for three days too, so
that the whole town would be crawling about on hands and knees, just—She
laughed at the picture and took another corner at full speed. Just wait
until she _was_ a witch! Och, no one would chase her then, or beat her,
either....

A red petticoat spread on a gorse bush vanished magically as she flew
past. Why not? If she got away, she was a petticoat richer. If not, what
would it be mattering, a petticoat more, since she already had two stolen
purses, a kerchief, and a fine _sgian dhu_ on her anyhow?

Up hill and down and around, and finally away out of the town, and
presently the stones ceased to bite at her ankles and back, and the yells
were lost behind. Her breath seared her lungs now, and she hurtled down
the hill toward the river which led from Loch Ness to Moray Firth. At
last she threw herself into a cold, wet, but safely thick bank of broom,
bracken, and juniper, where she lay panting and gasping painfully. Mina
and Bogle would be safely away by now and waiting for her down along
the path that was the only road along Loch Ness. Let them wait. She had
earned a rest. She was sore bruised and aching from the stones, and her
bare feet, tough as they were, hurt from the cobbled streets of the town.

Och, she thought pleasantly, if only they would some day be catching and
hanging Mina, and Bogle too—but only, of course, after Kelpie had learned
all the witchcraft that Mina knew, and perhaps more. Oh, to be a more
powerful witch than Mina, and to be putting all kinds of curses on her
until all scores were settled!

Curled up in her nest of bracken, head resting on the scarlet petticoat,
Kelpie drifted into her favorite daydream. _Dhé_, how Mina would plead
for mercy! Her arms and legs would shrivel up, just, and her few
remaining teeth fall out. Kelpie smiled, looking like a starry-eyed
lass dreaming of romance. Then her short upper lip curled and lifted,
revealing a row of small, sharp white teeth, so that she looked more like
a wolf cub dreaming of dinner.

The long northern twilight was beginning to creep into the Great Glen,
for sunlight vanished early in the valley between those high, steep,
massive hills, even in March. She must go on now, or she would be beaten
for delaying. And presently, still sore, she was loping silently down the
path by the loch, where new gorse and bracken grew between patches of old
snow. Two or three miles down she met Bogle and Mina sitting on their
bundles and waiting.

“You have taken your time about getting here,” said Bogle. “And how many
purses were you taking?”

Twilight had deepened into the toneless half-light of gloaming. Light
had slowly drained from the Glen, leaving a world of eerie gray on the
hill above Loch Ness. The loch itself was liquid iron, from which might
easily arise the three black humps and snaky neck of the _each uisghe_,
the water horse who lived there. A meager supper was over, and the only
color left in the world was the small salmon-pink pennant of cloud flying
over the black shoulder of Meall Fuarvounie and reflected in the shining
crystal ball in Mina’s hand.

She spread a shabby bit of stolen black velvet on the springy turf and
set the crystal sphere lovingly in the exact center. “And now you will be
reading the glass with me,” she said.

It was a nightly ritual. Ordinarily Kelpie found it interesting,
exciting, but tonight she was sore and aching and rebellion was in her.
It was foolish, of course, to express such feelings. It was to risk not
only a beating—which, being used to, she did not fear—but an evil spell,
which she did. But she expressed them now and then, all the same.

“May the _uruisg_ be away with you!” she said sweetly and ducked. Mina’s
fist merely caught the top of Kelpie’s tangled head, but her snarl was
more effective.

“Mind me so!” Her voice rasped. “And how do you think to be learning
witchcraft else?”

“I am reading the crystal with you every night,” muttered Kelpie. “But
you’ll never let me be trying alone, and you’ve taught me never so much
as a single wee spell.”

“And listen to her now!” The hateful voice was a croak of derision,
echoed by a snort from the bulky gray shadow that was Bogle. “She cannot
crawl yet and she is wanting to run!” And this time the blow fell on
Kelpie’s high, thin cheekbone before she could think to duck. “Look into
the crystal, _amadain_!”

Kelpie considered further defiance and then decided against it. She
didn’t really feel up to another beating tonight, and she did want to
learn witchcraft. So she permitted Mina’s long gnarled hand to clutch her
own so that Kelpie would be able to see what Mina did. For a seer could
share his sight with another by touching him, and Kelpie, said Mina, was
not yet ready to see alone. Night after night, for as long as she could
remember, Kelpie had looked into the ball with Mina, describing what she
saw, while the old woman questioned and corrected her.

“Now,” said Mina, and Kelpie stared into the luminous ball. First it
clouded, then the center began to glow dully, and then a vague picture
developed. Kelpie’s dark head bent forward on its long neck, and her eyes
grew wide and fixed....

Two young men were riding along a loch-side on fine horses, with a blond
giant behind them on a shaggy Highland pony. Bright tartan _filleadh
mór_—the bulky great-kilts—beat heavily against their thighs and swung
over their shoulders, and their heads were high with the proud confidence
of the well-born.

Kelpie recognized one of them. Young Glenfern, it was, whose father was
a minor chieftain of Clan Cameron, and who had once given her a farthing
and a sudden compassionate smile that lit his grave dark-eyed face like
sunshine. The smile had roused in Kelpie a strange sensation of joy and
resentment combined, and the feeling came back now as she stared. There
was gladness behind the composure of his face as he rode, and his dark
shoulder-length hair lifted in the breeze. And Kelpie, ignorant of the
eternal attraction of lad for lass, frowned at the pleasant pain of her
own feelings. She spared no more than a glance for the other young man in
MacDonald tartan, whose narrow face seemed composed of straight lines,
whose freckles matched the blaze of his red hair, whose expression seemed
to laugh at all the world.

“Who is that?” muttered Mina, peering. “What will they be to us? Do you
know them?”

“No,” lied Kelpie, whose policy was to deceive Mina and Bogle whenever
possible, just on principle.

“I would be seeing something of the King, or the war, or Mac Cailein
Mor,” said Mina fretfully.

Kelpie spared her a narrow, speculative glance. Why was Mina so
interested of late in politics? Of what benefit to her was the blaze
of civil war sweeping through the remote world of England and even
the less remote world of the Lowlands? As far as Kelpie could see, it
affected them not at all—except, of course, that Mac Cailein Mor, Marquis
of Argyll, Chief of Clan Campbell, was head of the Covenant army of
the Lowlands and therefore a merciless hunter of witches. But then Mac
Cailein Mor came into these Western Highlands only now and then, and
merely to wipe out here and there a few of the clans whom he had always
hated. A terrible fierce enemy he was, no doubt, and one deserving the
Evil Eye—but what was he to Mina, at all?

“Is it still the lads riding, then?” Mina persisted. “And who will they
be, whatever?”

Always and always Kelpie must describe every detail, just as if Mina
couldn’t see for herself. Kelpie was irritated. “How should I be
knowing?” she snapped, and a blow on the ear set her head ringing.

“Don’t know! _Amadain!_ What tartan will they be wearing?”

It was too much. Kelpie jerked away, too angry to care about the
consequences. “_Nathrach!_” She spat. “Look for yourself!”

The motionless gray bulk in the shadows now stirred and gave a low,
spiteful chuckle. “She cannot,” Bogle said, wheezing with satisfaction.
“It is sure I am now; her Sight will be going from her. It was for that,
these long years ago, that she must be stealing a wee bairn with the
ringed eyes of the Second Sight, and holding her hand so that she can see
through other eyes what she cannot see for herself—”

There was a scream of fury from old Mina, and a battered saucepan hurtled
through the dusk, hit Bogle’s ragged shoulder, and fell into the heather.
Bogle chuckled with malicious triumph. It wasn’t that he hated Mina
in particular. He was quite impartial, was Bogle; he simply hated all
mankind and greatly enjoyed seeing anyone unhappy. Now he ducked his
head slightly and shook with laughter as the saucepan was followed by an
assortment of sticks, stolen objects, and curses.

Kelpie sat perfectly still. A universe of startling possibilities was
opening to her mind—because, with Mina’s hand no longer touching hers,
the tiny picture in the crystal glowed more sharply, brightly clear than
she had ever seen it.

Wrapped in her tattered plaidie in a nest of last year’s dry bracken, she
lay awake after the long gloaming had deepened to black and stars peeped
out to grow dim again as the unearthly white radiance of the northern
lights—the Dancers—shimmered and pulsed over the western hills. The
wonder of the lights, as Kelpie watched, seemed to match the wonder in
her heart.

Had Bogle told the truth? Mina’s behavior made Kelpie think he had. And
it was certain that the crystal was even clearer for her without Mina’s
touch.

So then, was it also true that she had been stolen? From where? Kelpie
reached back into her memory but could find nothing but the vagrant life
of gypsies—tramping, begging, stealing, telling fortunes and selling
spells and charms in the Highlands, running from witch-hunters in the
Lowlands, sleeping under the sky.

Och, how could she ever be finding out? Only, perhaps, by becoming a
greater witch than Mina and putting the power upon her. And indeed, it
was a great advantage if Mina no longer had the Sight! _Dhé_, but she had
other powers, had Mina, terrible powers of cursing and spells! She was
clever, too, and for all her age she used a stick with great strength.
Kelpie must be canny, she must so. The cold streams of the northern
lights faded, and when they were gone, Kelpie was asleep.

2. The Waif

It was one of those days that couldn’t decide between winter and spring.
A cold, gusty wind whistled thinly through dark pine and barren birch and
chased fat clouds over the sky one by one, causing flurries of hard rain
to alternate with pale and hesitant sunshine.

They had traveled the thirty miles of Loch Ness, stopping at the village
near Urquhart Castle, and again at Kilcummin, where they had nearly been
caught picking the purse of one of the MacDonald chieftains. And now they
were moving south beside the silver ripples of Loch Lochy.

Kelpie was far ahead of Mina and Bogle, moving along high on the hillside
with a prancing motion caused partly by high spirits and partly by the
masses of tough-stemmed heather that covered the slope. She was still
sore from her latest beating, and also hungry. Her life consisted
largely of pain and hunger and cold, and was peopled by enemies to be
feared and hated or fools to be tricked, but Kelpie had discovered
all that long ago and was quite used to the fact and found life very
enjoyable anyway. Certainly it was never dull, and she had a zest for
adventure.

And in spite of everything, the world was beautiful. Kelpie could forgive
it a lot for that. In any case, her day was coming! She had deliberately
described the details in last night’s crystal quite wrongly, and Mina
hadn’t known.

Or had she?

This appalling thought caused Kelpie to miss her usually sure footing and
to step right in the middle of a gorse bush. Neither the travel-hardened
toughness of the bare brown foot nor the deceptive beauty of the silvery
leaves saved her from a good pricking, and Kelpie swore with an ardent
fluency that would have pleased Bogle greatly. Still hopping and cursing,
she saw the movement and color of the three horsemen down the loch much
later than she should have. They were coming along toward her in the path
below and doubtless had well-filled purses which might well be lightened.
She was halfway down the steep slope when suddenly the sun shone brightly
from behind the latest cloud, and Kelpie recognized the scene from the
crystal: young Glenfern and his red-haired companion and the giant blond
_ghillie_ riding behind.

But there was no time to wonder about it. Timing her movements
carefully, Kelpie threw herself headlong down the last steep bank and
sprawled full length in the path, almost under the horses’ feet.

“_Dhé!_” exclaimed Ian Cameron as he and Alex reined the horses so
sharply that they reared for a moment on their hind legs. All he could
see on the ground was a pitifully small and tattered figure, clearly in
great danger of being trampled to death.

Alex MacDonald, from his better position behind, saw something a little
more. As Ian’s horse stepped alarmingly close to Kelpie, one “thin and
helpless” arm moved, neatly and efficiently, the precise six inches
required for safety. Alex’s red eyebrows arched, and an appreciative grin
danced on his face. He relaxed and prepared to enjoy the comedy that was
sure to follow.

The crisis was over in a moment. “Is it all right you are?” demanded Ian
of the wee figure, and the wee figure nodded biting its lip in a fine
imitation of silent courage as it raised itself painfully to an elbow.
For Kelpie had discovered that this sort of act was much more touching
than loud wails and tears. She decided to have a hurt back, this being
hard to disprove, as well as more impressive than other hurts. So she
winced to indicate great pain and looked up with a brave and pathetic
smile.

The lads looked back at her. A scrawny waif it was, tattered and
unbelievably dirty. The tangled dark hair, apparently never touched by
water or comb, fell over the thin face in a way that reminded Ian of
shaggy Highland cattle—except that these eyes were unlike those of any
cattle that ever lived. They were long and black-fringed, set at a slant
in the narrow face, and strangely ringed. Around each black pupil was
a wide circle of smoky blue, then a narrow one of lightish gray, and a
third of deep and vivid blue. Astonishing eyes, almost alarming! Where
had he seen them before?

While Ian stared in wonder and pity, Alex made a few further observations
of his own. He noted the high cheekbones and the pointed chin and the
wicked slant of black brows and the short upper lip—giving rather the
effect, thought Alex, of a wicked elfin creature, or perhaps a witch.
Amused but wary, he sat back and let his foster brother make up his mind.
Ian wouldn’t have been noticing, of course, that the wee _briosag_ threw
herself into the path on purpose. Ian had the way of always believing the
best of everyone.

Ian was aware of the cynical smile behind him. A nasty suspicious mind
Alex had! It was a pity. What else could he be expecting of a poor wild
waif like this? What sort of life must she have had? Then Ian remembered
where he had seen her before: with that wicked old witch Mina. Och, the
poor creature!

“’Tis hurt you are,” he said worriedly, to Kelpie’s relief. She had
feared for a moment that she’d been too subtle altogether.

“Och, only a little,” she whispered, putting on a braw show of dreadful
pain heroically borne.

“Now, do not be overdoing it,” drawled Alex.

Kelpie shot him a look which, had she been a properly qualified witch,
would surely have caused him to break out with every loathsome disease
known to mankind. Unfortunately the only effect of her venomous glare was
that Alex’s smile broadened to an insulting chuckle. Och, what a beast
he was, then, with the bony, freckled, jeering face of him, and the two
jaunty tufts of red hair jutting upward just where horns ought to sprout!
She was about to tell him so, and in great detail, but just in time she
remembered her role and Ian, who was still showing his pity and dismay.

What a misfortune, he thought, that this should happen now, just when he
and Alex were nearly home again after those long months away in Oxford,
where he had been savagely homesick. They were about to get home early,
and with very important news, and now this had to happen, not five miles
from Glenfern.

“What shall we be doing with you at all?” he said. “We cannot just be
leaving her here!” he added fiercely, turning on Lachlan, the blond
_ghillie_, who, looking larger than usual on his short shaggy pony, had
muttered something from behind.

“Give her a copper,” Alex said, laughing, “and see how quickly she’ll
mend!”

Copper indeed! thought Kelpie. It was silver she was wanting. But she
didn’t hide the gleam in her eyes quickly enough.

“I’ll show you,” said Alex. Slowly, tantalizingly, he drew a coin from
his sporran and held it up. It gleamed silver, and Kelpie stared at it
greedily. “See?” Alex chuckled and spun it toward her.

Quick as the flash of bright metal in the air, her brown hand shot out
to catch it in flight—then dropped, and the coin fell noiselessly on the
path. Kelpie sat staring first at it and then at her own shoulder with
dismay that was, for a change, perfectly genuine.

“I—I _am_ hurt!” she said with astonishment and then hastily snatched up
the coin with her good left hand before they should change their minds.

“Not too hurt to be picking up the silver,” observed Alex, but the
gibe lacked his earlier light tone. Ian had already dismounted and
was touching rather gingerly the filthy rags covering the shoulder in
question. The lass frankly stank.

This time Kelpie’s face showed an honest flicker of pain. “I think it
will be sprained, or perhaps out of place,” Ian decided and looked at
Alex.

Alex looked back at him. “Well, so. And where does she live, then? Where
are her people? Perhaps Lachlan could be taking her home.”

Ian shrugged. “I think I’ve seen her with Old Mina and Black Bogle. Is
that so?” he asked Kelpie, who nodded.

Alex raised his eyebrows, not in the least surprised. It was logical that
she should belong to the nastiest witch in Scotland.

“Will they be coming along, then?” Ian inquired, and again Kelpie nodded,
so bewildered by her unexpected hurt and the pain that was now shooting
sharply through her shoulder that she couldn’t really think clearly at
all.

A glum silence settled on them, broken only by furtive and disapproving
mutters from Lachlan. His duty was to be protecting his young masters,
and now here they were consorting with witches, and he not able to
prevent them at all, at all. He crossed himself.

Ian sighed with relief when the bent figures of Mina and Bogle appeared
up the loch-side. They would take care of their lass, and he and Alex
could be away home.

But it wasn’t that easy. Mina, after taking in the situation at a
glance, burst into lamentations and curses that caused the ruddy Lachlan
to go pale. “And is it our poor lass you have harmed, wicked beasts
that you are?” she wailed, while Bogle stood like a massive old tree
in disconcerting silence. “Ocho, ocho, whatever shall we be doing now?
May the Evil Eye fall on all your cattle, and the pox upon yourselves,
_uruisgean_ that you are!”

Ian himself recoiled, not from the curses, but from the evil that was in
this horrible old woman. What a dreadful thing that a young lass should
belong to such as these! It was wicked! And yet, what could he do? What
could anyone do? Unhappily he stood and stroked his horse’s nose while
Alex handled the matter.

Alex did handle it beautifully, with just the right mixture of
indulgence, severity, and money. “’Twas no fault of ours that she fell,
but altogether her own,” he told them. “Still, we are kind-hearted and
willing to give you a bit of silver.” And when Mina would have demanded
more, he fixed her with a stern hazel stare that caused her own pale,
muddy eyes to waver and fall. It was all settled then, and Ian, feeling
depressed, turned to mount his horse.

And then Black Bogle, perhaps feeling that they had been worsted in the
bargaining, reached down and jerked Kelpie roughly to her feet by the
injured arm.

The bit of brutality wrenched a choked cry of anguish from the girl. Ian
whirled around, and Alex was off his horse in a flying leap and seized
Bogle’s arm in a grip that had no gentleness whatever.

“Let go of her, you vile bully!” Alex snarled, red with fury, while Ian
removed the sagging Kelpie from Bogle’s grasp. Lachlan, brandishing a
steel dirk a foot long, loomed ominously behind....

When Kelpie was again able to take an active interest in events, she
heard several voices: a cold, contemptuous one and a dangerously quiet
one, Bogle’s growl and Mina’s whine, with dour grumblings in the
background. More money changed hands, and then Mina bent over Kelpie, a
cunning, complacent look on her face.

“The fine gentlemen will be taking you home with them to fix your hurt,
and we will come to fetch you in the morning,” she said. “You will
be properly grateful—and behave as I’d be wishing you to,” she added
meaningly, and Kelpie nodded. She knew quite well what Mina meant—steal
whatever she could lay hands on.

Then Ian’s concerned face was close to hers as he removed the grimy
once-red sash from about her waist and gently bound the injured arm to
her side. “And who’s knowing what further damage the brute will have
done?” he muttered.

After that she found herself lifted to the fearful height of Alex’s
horse and felt his hard young arm firmly around her. And at a slow walk
they set along toward the fork in the path that led through the hills to
Glenfern.

By the time they reached the top of the pass, Kelpie was feeling much
better. She began to relish the adventure, and she stared with interest
at the scene before her as they paused. Ian’s face was alight with joy,
and Lachlan actually had tears in his eyes. A strange thing that was, she
thought wonderingly, ignorant as she was of the love of the Highlander
for his own hills. Kelpie knew no home but the ground she walked on.

The glen ran westward ahead of them, a long little valley cradled in
hills that were just turning jewel-green with new bracken and showing
dark with juniper and white here and there with birch trunks and unmelted
snow. On the northern slope stood a weathered gray house which seemed
large and grand indeed to Kelpie, and scattered along the glen were
little rye-thatched shieling huts of unmortared stone, nestled into the
hillside as if they had grown there. Farther down the glen was a wee
loch of silver and blue, ringed with white birches and dotted with green
islets.

“Loch nan Eilean—Lake of the Islands,” murmured Ian with his heart in his
voice, and they rode on down the hill and along to the stables.

Alex lifted Kelpie down from the horse, looked at her oddly, and then
with a grin forced open her left hand.

“You little devil!” He laughed. “You’ve picked my pocket!”

3. Glenfern

Kelpie perched gingerly on a fine brocaded chair near the door of the
drawing room and gazed curiously at the scene before her. For house and
glen had, on their arrival, erupted into a perfect frenzy of excitement,
questions, tears, laughter, shouting, teasing, and hugging.

_Dhé!_ And was this the way most families were behaving toward one
another? Kelpie found it baffling and achingly strange, and vaguely
annoying; and on the whole she was glad enough to have been forgotten for
the moment while she recovered her usual cool head.

Talk rose and surged in a mixture of Gaelic and English. Cameron of
Glenfern paced back and forth, the rusty-red and green of his kilt
swinging about strong knees. Lady Glenfern, smiling and anxious at once,
sat in a carved oak chair, her harebell-blue skirts billowing about her
feet. Two small kilted lads pranced with excitement, a bittie lass
clamored to be away up in Ian’s arms, and a bonnie lass in green, perhaps
near Kelpie’s age, clung affectionately to both Ian and Alex at once.

Through the open window Kelpie could see Lachlan standing in a ring of
laughing and chattering clansmen, and it began to dawn on her that this
was no ordinary homecoming. The lads had been away to school in a far-off
place in England and had returned quite unexpectedly with important news.

“We knew that King Charles had fled London and set up his court at
Oxford,” said Glenfern. “And you wrote that Montrose was there, awaiting
permission to come and raise an army in Scotland for the King. Now you
say he’s coming?”

“Aye so,” said Alex cynically, “but a bit late, now that Argyll has got
all the Lowlands and some of the Highlands well under the thumb of the
cursed Covenant! Were you knowing that the Covenant army has crossed the
border into England and will be fighting along with the Parliament army
against the King?”

“_Dhé!_” exclaimed Glenfern in dismay. “Is it too late, then? Why was the
King waiting so long?”

Alex shrugged. “Och, King Charles has a grand talent for not seeing what
he doesn’t like, and for doing the wrong thing altogether or the right
thing too late.”

Ian, whose loyalty was a simple and wholehearted thing, frowned at his
foster brother. “He’s our king and a Stewart,” he reminded him and then
turned to his father. “At any rate, we were thinking we’d best come home
while we still could—and perhaps join Montrose when he arrives.”

None of this meant a great deal to Kelpie, so she began looking around
with greedy wonder at the drawing room. Och, the glowing fine old silver
on the sideboard, the great portraits on the tapestry-hung walls, the
grand, massive carved furniture worn smooth as silk by time and polish,
and the damask draperies at real glass windows! It wasn’t fair that some
people should have so much! They should be sharing it, they should, and
it was up to Kelpie, she felt, to see to the sharing.

A small silver snuff box was lying on a table near her; an instant later,
it wasn’t. Kelpie’s long slanted eyes flickered with satisfaction, but
before she could so much as thrust her loot under her rags, a redheaded
figure bent over her and a sinewy long hand grasped her wrist gently but
with great strength.

“Really, Ian,” observed Alex lazily, “you must be paying more attention
to your guest.”

“Ssssss!” said Kelpie, again wishing she could cast the Evil Eye on him.
But instead the eyes of the entire family were now on her.

“My sorrow!” said Ian ruefully. “I was forgetting!”

“A shame to all of us, and she injured!” declared his mother, standing
up. “’Tis only for the night, you were saying, Ian? Well, so, we will
see to the shoulder—but not in the house, I think,” she added, looking at
Kelpie’s filthy clothes.

“No,” agreed her husband. “Come away out to the wee room in the stable,
which will do nicely, I think.”

And Kelpie, who had expected to be beaten and turned out for her theft,
stared. They were daft, all of them! But presently she forgot their
daftness because of the surprisingly painful business of having her
shoulder tended. She gritted her teeth and cursed vigorously, and after
it was over she was glad enough to lie down on the small cot in the
stable-room and be left alone to sleep.

Kelpie awoke with an oppressive sense of being trapped. Blindly hostile
walls and ceiling surrounded her, shutting out sky and wind. In sudden
panic she would have leaped up and fled to the safety of outside, but
the first movement brought the sharp, forgotten pain of her shoulder.
She gasped slightly, blinked, and noticed a pair of dark eyes regarding
her from a flower face. It was the wee bit of a lassie she had seen in
the big house, who stood watching Kelpie with grave sympathy. She was a
tiny thing, her body slight as it rose from the primrose bulk of her long
skirts, but Kelpie was disconcerted. The gaze seemed to understand too
much.

“Poor lady!” said the mite, shaking her honey-brown head sorrowfully. “Is
it a sore bad hurt, then?”

Kelpie said nothing.

Light danced into the dark eyes. “Wee Mairi will kiss it and make it
well.” Quite undeterred by thoughts of cleanliness, the child leaned
over the cot and dropped a soft kiss on the bandages covering Kelpie’s
shoulder, and then another on her cheek. “Now it will stop hurting, just,
and you can be happy,” she announced. Crooking a small finger in the old
gesture of calling down a blessing from heaven, she turned and trotted
out, leaving a shaken Kelpie behind her.

Nothing like this had ever happened to her before! Children had always
clung to their mothers, frightened of the witch’s lass. No one at all had
ever kissed her and Kelpie, to her dismay, found that her eyes had filled
with tears. Och, this would never do at all! She must be hard and strong,
or else how would she ever survive in the world she knew? She closed her
treacherous eyes and concentrated on subduing the weakness.

The weakness was just about subdued when she became aware of more company
in the room. This time it was a pair of seven or eight-year-old lads with
penetrating blue eyes set in identical tanned faces which were alight
with passionate curiosity.

Kelpie, still shaken and very much on the defensive from her encounter
with Wee Mairi, glared at them with frank hostility. They went on staring
at her with unwavering interest. _Dhé!_ They were nearly as disconcerting
as Wee Mairi—and there were two of them. Kelpie decided to take the
offensive.

“Ssssss!” she hissed, baring her teeth and beetling her thick eyebrows
menacingly. The bright eyes rounded slightly, but with increased
curiosity rather than alarm.

“Were you crying?” asked one boy candidly.

“Are you a witch?” demanded the other.

Kelpie considered. It wasn’t in the least safe to be thought a witch.
It could lead to all sorts of uncomfortable and fatal things. On the
other hand, she had never known real safety in any case, and it would be
pleasant to impress, or even frighten, these complacent lads.

“I am so,” she said with an intimidating scowl. “I can put curses on ye,
or the Evil Eye whatever.”

They were unintimidated. “Show us!” suggested one hopefully.

“Alex was saying you cannot,” challenged the other.

“Och, just you wait!” said Kelpie darkly. “I will be fixing that Alex as
ever was!”

“What will you do to him?” persisted the skeptic with morbid curiosity.

“What is your name?” asked his twin.

“Kelpie!” said she in triumph, and at last she had impressed them. For
every Highland child knew that a Kelpie was a kind of fairy person, a
water witch who wails at night by lochs and rivers for a victim, or cries
for admittance at shuttered windows.

“I don’t believe it,” said the skeptical twin, but he said it
halfheartedly.

“Ronald! Donald!” The green-frocked lass who was Kelpie’s age stood in
the doorway, with a big-boned young woman behind her carrying a tray.
“Och, naughty lads! Ye shouldn’t be bothering in here, and well ye know
it!”

“She’s a witch, and a kelpie too,” reported one of them, unabashed.

“At least she says so, but we haven’t seen her put a spell yet,” added
the other. “When will you be showing us one?”

The young woman nearly dropped her tray as she hastily tried to make the
sign of the cross. Her young mistress looked faintly alarmed but stood
her ground. “Be away, now,” she told the twins. “I’ll take that, Fiona.”
She took the tray from the quaking Fiona and set it on a stool beside
Kelpie’s cot.

“We thought you’d be waking up hungry,” she said and then looked at
Kelpie apologetically, as if ashamed of her own good fortune and pretty
clothes. “My name is Eithne,” she added, pronouncing it “Ay-na,” with
the Highland lilt in her voice. “And the twins must not be saying such
things—about your being a witch, I mean. Are you?” she asked, overcome by
curiosity.

Kelpie already had hand and mouth full of cold venison pie and new-baked
bannocks and had no intention of risking the rest of the food. She shook
her head firmly and put on her most innocent and helpless expression.

“Och, no!” she mumbled truthfully around her bannock. “Not I!”

At this moment a gaunt black cat sidled through the open door, spat at
Fiona, and with a joyful yowl leaped right on top of Kelpie. This was
unfortunate, since black cats were known to have a fondness for witches.

Fiona backed up to the door, crossing herself furiously, and Eithne
looked awed. “_Dhé!_” she whispered. “Dubh has never done that before for
anyone!”

Kelpie looked at Dubh with a mixture of pleasure and irritation. She
liked cats, but this one had timed his appearance poorly.

Dubh looked back at her, great topaz eyes glowing into hers steadily and
inscrutably, and his purring filled the room.

“He is wanting some food,” suggested Kelpie lamely. But Dubh didn’t
show the slightest interest in her meal. Instead, he arranged himself
comfortably on top of her legs.

“Animals are always liking me,” Kelpie went on with better success.
Eithne’s face brightened and cleared. Of course! And if animals liked a
person, it was a sure sign that the person was to be trusted. Eithne,
like her brother, wanted to think the best of everyone, especially
of those whom life seemed to have treated unfairly. Besides, Kelpie
interested her.

Presently she was seated on the edge of the cot, listening to the lurid
tale of Kelpie’s life and even being shown some of the scars and bruises
on the thin shoulders and back. Eithne was hot and shaking with shocked
indignation. It was perfectly dreadful, appalling!

And Kelpie, rising to great tragic heights, played up to the most
sympathetic audience she had ever had. The long ringed eyes fixed on
Eithne’s brown ones were soft and luminous and oh, so innocent.

But the “innocent” eyes reminded Alex of Dubh’s, as he entered the room
and got a good view of both pairs. He hadn’t been easy in his mind about
Eithne’s being in here so long. Ringed eyes like that weren’t canny. The
lass might well be a witch, at that, though likely too young to be very
dangerous. All the same, his foster sister must be protected.

“Come away from her and out of here!” he ordered Eithne brusquely.

He should have known better. She whirled on him, round chin jutting
out indignantly. “And will you be judging her unfairly, like all the
villagers and all?” Eithne demanded. “Don’t deny it, Alex MacDonald!
You’re thinking hard, suspicious things about her this very minute!”

Alex’s sunburned face looked disconcerted at this sudden attack, but
only for an instant. “Oh, aye,” he agreed cheerfully. “I am that. And why
wouldn’t I be, with the many reasons she’s given me already? Has she put
a spell on you, _m’eudail_? Best be away to the house and see if Catriona
can break it.”

Eithne stamped her foot, but it wasn’t easy to find a retort. “You—you
talk like a Covenanter!” she finally flung at him scathingly and flounced
out in a swirl of petticoats, Fiona behind her.

Alex scratched his red head, more confounded by her passion than by her
rather shaky logic. He grinned wryly at Kelpie, who looked back at him in
triumph.

“Poor innocent waif!” he jeered, putting one foot up on the edge of the
cot, where Dubh spat at it. He rested an elbow on his kilted knee and
stared at Kelpie with interest. She stared back through slitted eyes.

“Before you’re up and away again,” he said, casually, “I’ve a wee word
to be saying to you, and it is this. Unlike Ian and Eithne, I’ve a nasty
suspicious mind, I have.” He wagged his head sadly. “And I’ve a picture
in my head of you away off tomorrow bearing every movable thing in the
glen hid in your rags, and we sitting here without so much as a stick of
furniture left to us.”

“Indeed, and I would never be doing such a thing!” cried Kelpie
indignantly. “How could I be carrying it all?”

Alex laughed outright. Kelpie scowled. She had been cursed and beaten
often enough, but she had never before been laughed at, and she didn’t
like it.

Alex stopped laughing and grinned at her. “Well, so, and I’ve a
soft heart in me, so I’ll be doing nothing about such matters as
pocket-picking or a certain snuff box, nor will anyone else, I think.
But”—and he leaned forward a little—“should anything else just happen
to be missing when you leave, then you’ll be finding the hand of every
Cameron and MacDonald, all through the Great Glen and Lochaber from Loch
Leven to Loch Ness, turned against you.”

Kelpie showed sharp white teeth in a defiant laugh. “Are you thinking
I’ve never heard threats before?”

“Aye, I’m sure you have, and most unpleasant ones,” retorted Alex. “But
have you ever had one like this carried out, and two entire clans arrayed
against you, and every _ghillie_ on the watch?”

Kelpie narrowed her eyes. He had her, just! And to have the Great Glen
and Lochaber closed against them would be a sore handicap indeed.

“Sssss!” said Kelpie with deep sincerity.

Alex grinned again. “I’m not done,” he said briskly. “It seems that my
foster sister has given you her friendship. You’re not deserving it, of
course, but for Eithne that’s good enough reason for giving it. Now, I am
fond of Eithne, and if you should be taking advantage of her or hurting
her in any way, I shall see to it that you are punished—even if I must
denounce you as a witch. Do you understand?”

It was a fearful threat, and Kelpie, used to bluster and invective, was
unnerved by his very calm.

“_Nathrach!_” She spat “Remember, witches can curse! Shall I be putting
the Evil Eye on you?” And she widened her slanted eyes until the dark and
light rings were smoldering circles.

Alex laughed again, infuriatingly. “And if you haven’t already put the
Evil Eye on me at least three times today, it must be that you have not
got it at all. For you’ve wanted to, haven’t you? No, I’ll wager you
cannot do it.”

“Mina can,” muttered Kelpie sulkily.

“Now that I’ll believe,” he agreed readily. “But even the Evil Eye
wouldn’t save the two of you from being burned as witches, would it?”

Och, and he was so sure of himself! Kelpie saw suddenly that great
cunning and apparent submission were her best weapons. “And if I am
keeping the bargain?” she hinted, looking at his pocket.

“We’ve no bargain.” Alex corrected her mildly. “I’m no such fool. It’s
just that I’ve been telling you in a friendly way what will happen if
you should be stealing anything or hurting Eithne, that’s all.” And he
sauntered out, his kilt swinging jauntily about his brown knees.

4. The Daft Folk

Kelpie slept heavily for the first part of the night and then awoke to
stare restlessly into the stifling, closed-in darkness. How could a body
tell the hour, shut in like this? She must be out into the free air and
waiting when Mina and Bogle came for her.

She got up and groped her way out into the warm, horse-scented main part
of the stable. Dubh, a blacker shape in the dark, came and wove himself
around her ankles as she felt for the door with her good left hand; her
right shoulder was still too sore to move.

And then she was outside in the cold sweet air of pre-dawn. The hills to
the southeast stood black against a thin ghost of gray in the sky, and
the glen was filled with a toneless purple except for the ropes of pearly
mist strung down the clefts of the hills and over the loch. A tiny burn
and waterfall danced in a white thread at the far end of the glen, and
the wind smelled of the sea.

Kelpie drew in her breath deeply, and the beauty of it made a sore ache
inside her and a daft desire to cry. It was something deep within her,
just, that had these strange feelings now and then, and she must be
careful never to let them out.

It was these daft folk at Glenfern who were making her feel peculiar. She
must be away from them, away from the trapping walls and alien people,
to the freedom of the hills and sky. She slipped like a wraith around to
the back of the stable, where the ground sloped upward, wrapping her bare
ankles in the wetness of rank grass and heather and stinging nettles,
which she had long ago stopped noticing. And at the upper corner a long
skinny arm reached out with the swiftness of a snake, seized Kelpie’s
wrist (fortunately, the uninjured one), and shook her.

“We’ve been waiting for you this long while!” Mina began pulling her up
the hill.

Kelpie came willingly enough. She was almost glad to see Mina’s evil
old face. She knew where she was with Mina. She could hate and be hated
single-mindedly, and always know how Mina would behave. The people at
Glenfern were unpredictable and confusing.

Black Bogle was waiting in a clump of snowy-trunked birches halfway up
the hill. He said nothing, just grinned without warmth or welcome.

“Well, and what have you got?” demanded Mina, turning upon Kelpie with
greedy fingers held out.

“Nothing at all,” muttered Kelpie defensively. “The red-haired _uruisg_
took back the silver and the snuff box and said if I was taking anything
else he would be setting all the Camerons and MacDonalds against us.”

Mina cursed Alex and Kelpie both, but with her mind so clearly upon other
matters that Kelpie didn’t feel the curses would be very effective.
“Well, so!” concluded the old woman suddenly. “And just as well, perhaps.
For we are wanting you to bide here for a time.”

Kelpie stared, her mouth drooping open. _Dhé!_ Now Mina was being as
unpredictable as anyone in the glen below! “And whatever for, if I cannot
be stealing anything?” she demanded. “And why would they be letting me
stay?”

Mina struck at her. Kelpie ducked automatically, and Bogle chuckled. He
would also have chuckled had the blow landed.

“You’ll be persuading them, just,” commanded Mina. “Play upon their
sympathy. Let them be making you a maidservant if they will—and mind
that you be a good one. ’Tis a spy you’ll be, to watch and listen, for
the lads are fresh from England and knowing about affairs. Be learning
how they feel about the King and Mac Cailein Mor and the Lord Graham of
Montrose. And keep them feeling kindly toward you, for we may use them
one day.”

Kelpie hooded her eyes thoughtfully. She had already learned a good
bit—but why tell Mina now? Better to wait and see where her own
advantage lay and learn what Mina was up to.

“And where will ye be going?” she ventured to ask.

“Never you mind!” snapped Mina. “We will be returning for you when we are
ready, and then it may be that you can learn some of the witchcraft you
are wanting so badly.” Beneath their wrinkled lids her faded old eyes
gleamed at Kelpie watchfully.

Kelpie kept her own eyes veiled. She knew how much Mina’s promise was
worth, but here was hope that Mina might really be going to teach her at
last, for her own profit. Kelpie must be very docile, then, and never let
Mina suspect what was in her mind.

“Very well so,” she agreed indifferently, it being best to show neither
reluctance nor enthusiasm.

“Once more with the crystal, then,” ordered Mina, producing it; and
Kelpie obediently sat down in the dew-heavy clumps of long grass. Her
face was lowered meekly, to conceal the knowledge that Mina depended on
her to see the picture. The gray light was now growing rosy over the bare
top of Meall Dubh. The rosiness was reflected in the shining ball and
then moved and scattered.

“A battle!” whispered Kelpie, her eyes large and fixed on the scene. But
it wasn’t like the other battles she had seen in the crystal—no cavalry
charge of armored men on green slopes, but a charge of Highlanders on the
steeper, wilder hills of Scotland. She could clearly make out the bright
tartans, and the double-handed claymores flashing, and she could almost
hear the wailing skirl of the pipes. There was a red-bearded giant in the
thick of it, and a slight brown-haired man on a horse, wearing a blue
bonnet, and it was he who seemed to be the power behind the charge—though
Kelpie couldn’t say how she knew. And now the others were fleeing in the
fury of the attack, and it seemed to Kelpie that she saw the blue and
green Campbell tartan among the defeated.

Her voice muted and hurried, Kelpie described the scene to Mina, leaving
out the name of the tartan and any other details that she guessed Mina
might not be able to make out for herself.

And now there was a different scene, and there was the brown-haired
man, dressed quite unfittingly as a groom, clasping the hand of the
red-bearded one, who was looking altogether astonished and overjoyed, and
behind them, on the hillside, was a cheering crowd of Highlanders.

“Well?” demanded Mina.

Kelpie shook her head. “A hillside and a crowd of people,” she murmured,
“but ’tis all cloudy.” And then she held her breath.

But Mina didn’t seem to know that Kelpie was deceiving her. “I wanted
news of Argyll,” she grumbled and put the crystal away. Then, after a
parting cuff, she strode up the hill with Bogle—and not so much as a
parting glance from either of them. Och, they had some pressing purpose,
the two of them, and whatever could it be?

The eastern sky was apricot now. The sun would be up in a few minutes,
and already golden light was pouring across the very tops of the hills
on the far side of the glen, but a fitful wind was coming from the west,
promising to bring rain clouds over those same bright hills....

What if, after all, Glenfern refused to let her stay? Feeling excited and
forlorn at once, Kelpie turned her back on the sunrise and walked slowly
down the hill.

She approached the house on lagging feet, suddenly nervous. Ian’s father
was outside the door, talking to Lachlan and an old man. Lachlan already
disliked her, and Glenfern looked as if he could be stern indeed. Kelpie
drooped her mouth into an expression of wistful apology, arranged the
sling on her arm so that it showed up well, and hovered tentatively a few
feet away.

Glenfern’s face was kindly enough when he looked up and saw her. “Good
morning,” he greeted her. “And how are you feeling?”

“Good morning,” replied Kelpie, “and well enough,”—making it sound like a
brave lie. “But—” She stopped, looking frightened. “Mina and Bogle came,”
she began, and paused.

“Oh. And you’ll be wanting a bit of breakfast before you’re away off
with them?” suggested Glenfern with a smile.

“They’re away off without me,” blurted Kelpie, looking helpless. “They’re
not wanting me any more.”

“_Dhé!_” said Glenfern. He didn’t seem overjoyed.

“I have nowhere to go,” added Kelpie pathetically, in case he hadn’t got
the point.

“Aye,” said Glenfern, who had got it very quickly. “Well, come away in,
and we’ll see my wife.”

“_Mise-an-dhui!_” said Lady Glenfern when they told her. She looked even
less delighted than her husband.

Eithne looked up from sorting and polishing silver. “Och, what a wicked
thing!” she exclaimed, her creamy oval face troubled and sympathetic.
“And have you no other relations?”

Kelpie shook her head. Wee Mairi, gathering that something was wrong, ran
over and slipped her warm little hand into Kelpie’s, and the twins looked
up in surprise, for they had thought everyone had more relations than
could be counted.

“Perhaps she had better be staying with us,” they suggested through
mouthfuls of buttered scone—an extra breakfast, no doubt. “She could put
the Evil Eye on all our enemies, whatever,” added Ronald hopefully.

“You’re not really a witch, are you?” asked Lady Glenfern seriously. A
white witch, of course, was a great benefit to have around, since all
her powers were used for good; and the Kirk of the Lowlands had not
yet reached far enough into the Highlands to make even white powers
dangerous. Still, the lass of Old Mina was more likely to be a black
witch, than a white one.

“No!” Said Kelpie vehemently, and with perfect truth. (How she wished she
were!) “And I would never be wanting to harm anyone,” she added, less
truthfully.

Alex, sitting cross-legged on the far window seat, sent her a bright
hazel glance of derision, which Kelpie ignored.

Glenfern raised an eyebrow at his wife, sighed, and smiled kindly. “Would
you be wanting to stay with us, lassie?” he asked.

“I would so,” replied Kelpie forthrightly. This was easier than she had
hoped—if only Alex didn’t spoil it. “I could be working,” she offered
meekly. “’Tis little enough I am knowing about the insides of houses, but
I learn quickly.”

Alex muffled a snort of laughter. They all glanced at him, but he merely
gave Kelpie a look that was both warning and mirthful.

Kelpie, who would have made a good general, seized the offensive boldly.
“He is thinking I want to steal things,” she announced, nodding her
tangled black head in Alex’s direction.

“And do you not?” asked Glenfern bluntly.

“Of course,” admitted Kelpie candidly. Didn’t everyone? “But I would
not be doing it,” she went on, her blue-ringed eyes fixed on Glenfern’s,
“because you would be sending me away if I did.”

It was the best thing she could have said. Glenfern lifted his dark
head with a shout of delighted laughter. Everyone seemed pleased and
amused, and Kelpie made a mental note that truth was sometimes even more
effective than a lie. She looked demure and managed at the same time to
shoot a triumphant glance at Alex. But, disappointingly, he only grinned.

“Very well so,” decided Lady Glenfern, smiling at her. “It is not many
people can claim to having a friendly Kelpie staying with them. And I
think you have it in you to be a good lass, and trustworthy.”

Kelpie looked at her, deeply shocked. How could a great lady like this be
so foolishly trusting? And all of them seemed the same—excepting Alex,
of course, who was sensibly suspicious. Kelpie definitely approved of
this, although she hated his uncanny astuteness and his mockery. As for
the rest of them, indeed and indeed, it was a wonder they had managed to
survive so long. Fooling them was almost too easy, like catching a baby
hare with a broken leg.

She felt the same way all over again on that very afternoon, after a most
difficult morning.

The difficulties had begun almost immediately after Kelpie’s too easy
acceptance into the life of Glenfern. It seemed that Lady Glenfern had
peculiar ideas on the subject of cleanliness and propriety. To begin
with, there was the bath, the first Kelpie had ever had, supervised by
the mistress herself, and executed by Fiona and her formidable mother
Catriona. Catriona grumbled constantly, and Fiona crossed herself every
time Kelpie looked at her—which she did frequently and maliciously.

Then there was the matter of her name. “Have you not a proper Christian
name?” asked Lady Glenfern while Kelpie’s matted hair was being violently
combed and plaited into two long, thick tails. Kelpie, unable to shake
her head, and with eyes smarting from the pulling, made a sound that
meant no.

“My sorrow!” remarked her new mistress. “A strange thing to be naming a
lass for a water witch! Would you not rather be called something else?
Rena, perhaps, or Morag?”

But Kelpie caught a glimpse of herself just then in the small mirror that
stood on a table, and a fleeting shaft of panic shot through her. It
wasn’t herself at all! Her face was a stranger, with the dirt off and the
hair pulled back wetly to show all of her eyes and forehead and even her
fawn-shaped ears. _Dhé!_ If they changed her name as well, perhaps she
would cease altogether to be herself and become someone else entirely!

“No!” she said vehemently. And the subject was dropped.

But when they gave her a fine-woven blue woolen dress of Eithne’s for her
very own, and even something to wear under it, she began to take a more
favorable view of the situation. And when, in the afternoon, she met Ian
coming in the front door, he hardly seemed to know her at first. His eyes
opened wide as he shook the heavy rain from his plaidie, and then he gave
her one of his rare and sudden smiles that was like sunlight out of the
drenching sky. Kelpie grinned back, preening herself frankly in her new
finery.

“Och, aren’t you grand, just!” Ian said admiringly.

“Oh, aye,” agreed Kelpie, seeing no reason to deny it. “But I should have
a pocket and a wee bit of silver to put in it,” she added hopefully.

Ian laughed at her cheekiness. “Perhaps some day,” he said. “But I know
that you will not be stealing them, for you have said you won’t, and I
trust you.”

There it was again! Kelpie shook her head in wonder. That wasn’t at all
the reason she wouldn’t be stealing, and how could he be so daft as to
think it? His warm brown eyes and the lovely chiseled, sensitive curve of
his mouth quite melted Kelpie, and before she could stop herself she was
warning him.

“Och,” she blurted. “You mustn’t be trusting people so easily! It is not
safe whatever!”

“Mustn’t I trust you, then?” asked Ian gently. “Are you not wanting to be
trusted, Kelpie?”

“Indeed so,” explained Kelpie kindly. “Everyone is wanting to be trusted,
because then it is much easier to fool the ones who trust them. And you
may be trusting me because you have a stick over me, but it is foolish to
do so otherwise.”

They looked at each other pityingly.

“Perhaps people are not so good as I would like to think,” said Ian
slowly. “But I think they are not so bad as you have found them, either,
Kelpie. And I would liefer trust mistakenly than to mistrust unfairly. Do
you understand that?”

“No,” said Kelpie.

5. Bewitchery

It was a strange new life she was in, indeed! Walls and roof were like a
trap at first, although it was a grand thing to be warm and dry with all
the storm demons howling over the earth. It was strange to have certain
tasks at certain times, too, and not easy for a gypsy lass to whom time
was nothing. It was strange to eat hot meals three times a day, and at a
table, with the heat coming from the huge kitchen fireplace. But it was
not so strange to have the servants lowering at her suspiciously. For the
clanspeople of the glen, unlike their chief and his family, never trusted
this water witch for a moment. An evil sprite she was, and no mistake
about it. They watched every move she made.

Still, suspicion was less after her first Sunday there, after she had
gathered with the others to hear Glenfern read the service. It was well
known that no witch would dare enter a church or hear the Holy Word,
lest the roof fall in or some other dire thing happen. Kelpie herself was
uneasy about this at first. True, she was not a witch, but she wanted to
be, and she had read the crystal with Mina, and she wasn’t altogether
certain what might happen. Still, it wasn’t a proper church, with a
priest, but only Glenfern reading the Anglican service—and in any case,
she dared not refuse. So she went, heart beating faster than usual, and
was greatly relieved when nothing dreadful happened.

True to her promise, Kelpie was diligent and learned quickly. Her reward
was free time to wander in the encircling hills or to be with the other
young people—and this was strangest of all, for they played and chattered
and joked in a way quite novel to Kelpie, with laughter among them, and
an ease and affection that held no wariness. Under the bewitchment of
it, Kelpie found herself dropping her own guard more and more often.
She liked being with them! There was more joy in it than in shouting
and dancing alone on a hilltop; a different excitement from that she
felt when cutting purses. As the days passed, she often had to remind
herself of the advice she had given Ian. To be too relaxed could be
dangerous—especially with that sharp-minded Alex about.

Still, she couldn’t help enjoying those hours, and presently something
clicked in her mind, and she understood the baffling thing they called
teasing.

Kelpie, Eithne, Ian, and Alex were sitting nearly waist-deep in the
tangle of heather and bog-myrtle that rimmed Loch nan Eilean on a sunny
afternoon.

“Are you _sure_ you’re not wanting a proper name besides ‘Kelpie’?”
Eithne asked, her soft voice worried and laughing at once. “It seems so
insulting, just, that your parents....”

Parents? Suddenly Kelpie remembered what Bogle had said. Suppose she had
truly been stolen? Suppose she were really the daughter of a chief? Och,
the glory of it! Wealth and importance, lovely gowns and jewels, silver
buckles on real leather shoes, and a silver belt around her waist, and
oh, the safety of never having to run from angry crowds....

“_Dhé!_” she announced eagerly. “Mina and Bogle will not be my parents,
at all.” She paused dramatically and prepared to launch the rest of her
news. How startled and respectful they would be! Why hadn’t she thought
of it sooner?

“Och, now!” Alex turned twin sparks of laughter upon her. “And haven’t
I been waiting, just, for you to be telling us? Kelpie has suddenly
remembered,” he explained to the others solemnly, “that she was stolen by
the gypsies when a wee bairn and is truly the daughter of a great chief,
or perhaps of royal blood.”

“How did you know?” began Kelpie and then stopped. The others were
chuckling as at a great joke. Alex had put the blight of ridicule on
her story—though it was at least half true. And now no one would ever be
believing it at all!

“Beast!” she spat. “It is _true_!”

“As ever was!” agreed Alex jauntily and ducked her angry fist. Then he
caught her wrist, put it firmly in her lap, and sat grinning at her.
“You’re a wonderful wee liar, aren’t you just?” he observed admiringly.

“Ou, aye,” admitted Kelpie a trifle smugly before she realized that he
had tricked her again. “But this time,” she pointed out with indignation,
“I am not lying.”

“And would you not be saying the same thing if you were lying?” he
persisted.

This time Kelpie saw the trap, but she was already in it. “Of course,”
she admitted with forthright logic. “For what would be the good of lying
if you did not say it was the truth? But”—she bristled, slanted brows
scrambling themselves darkly above her short nose—“_this_ time it _is_
true!”

Alex laughed.

Kelpie tried for at least the twentieth time to put the Evil Eye on
him. The result was a poisonous look, if not a blighting one. “Wicked,
evil-minded beast!” she told him earnestly.

Ian looked at Alex judiciously. “Och, no; not wicked,” he said. “He’s a
bit evil-minded, ’tis true, and surely daft.”

Kelpie blinked.

“Aye, daft enough,” agreed Eithne happily. “Were you knowing, Kelpie,
that he’s altogether foolish about an English lass, his cousin Cecily in
Oxford? And yet all he can be saying of her is that she is like her own
wee kitten, and that he will marry with her some day.”

Alex grinned brazenly. “Well, and with who else?” he demanded. “You would
not be having me, _m’eudail_.”

“_Dhé_, no!” agreed Eithne promptly. “I’d as lief marry the twins!”

“Mayhap Kelpie would have him,” suggested Ian lazily, and then he and
Eithne shouted with laughter at the looks of sheer horror on both faces.

“Mercy!” begged Alex, getting to his knees and clasping his hands
pleadingly. “Anything but that! Curse me all you wish, water witch, but
_please_ do not marry me!”

Kelpie looked at him. It was then that something clicked. “Very well so,”
she agreed with enthusiasm. “And what sort of curse would you be wanting?”

She went back to the house a little later, looking thoughtful and with a
pleasant feeling in the heart of her—not merely because, for once, she
had got the better of Alex, but also because of the thing that happened
between people when they teased. It was a warm and happy thing that
turned insults to joking and the hatred of Alex to something kinder. For
surely a body did not tease where he hated! And surely he had been half
teasing her from the first.

Kelpie’s blue eyes glinted happily as she hurried into the big
stone-floored kitchen, so that Marsali the cook almost smiled at her and
Fiona for once forgot to cross herself.

“And about time it is, too!” Marsali grunted, remembering her doubts
about Kelpie. “The mistress has been looking for you while you were
playing like a fine lady. Here, now, be helping to pluck this fowl, and
let Master Donald go tell her that you’re here.”

Kelpie glanced at the half of the twins who was arming himself for an
afternoon of fishing, with a huge packet of scones and butter. “That’s
Ronald,” she said absently as she picked up the small brown pheasant.

Three pairs of eyes focused on her in sudden sharp attention, for it took
far more than a brief glance to tell one twin from the other. In fact,
only their mother and Wee Mairi could invariably do it.

“I’m Donald,” asserted the twin, his eyes sparkling at her.

“You’re Ronald.” Kelpie contradicted him serenely, hardly glancing up
from her plucking job.

Marsali at once took sides. “Och, now, will you be calling the wee master
a liar?” she demanded indignantly, her fists planted against her hips.

“Ou, aye,” said Kelpie. “He will be teasing you,” she added, pleased to
recognize it.

Fiona looked shocked. Marsali peered suspiciously from Kelpie to the
twin, who giggled. “Och, well, then,” said Marsali, her ruddy face now
ruddier with indignation, though she was not quite sure at whom to
direct it. “Fine it is that Master Ronald has the wee mole on the back
of his neck.” And she strode over to the grinning lad and lifted up the
shoulder-length dark hair to look at the neck beneath. Kelpie went on
plucking, perfectly sure of herself and feeling rather smug.

“Master Ronald it _is_!” Marsali clucked, and Fiona crossed herself and
edged away from Kelpie. “How could you be knowing, save with the Black
Power?”

“Aye,” demanded Ronald. “How were you knowing, Kelpie? Was it witchcraft?”

Kelpie grinned and shrugged. She couldn’t really tell how she knew.
It wasn’t the look of them, but rather the feel. Donald had a more
aggressive and challenging tone, and Ronald more a feel of hungry
curiosity. But how could a body explain this kind of knowing? No, they
would just have to think it witchcraft.

“_Mise-an-dhui!_” muttered Marsali, regarding her warily. Fiona had
backed against the far wall. Donald appeared in search of his twin,
and the two went into a conference. Presently they came out of it and
presented a solid front to Kelpie, sturdy legs planted wide.

“That is no proof you are a witch,” announced Donald. “Mother and Wee
Mairi can tell us apart, and they are no witches, only Mother is knowing
us too well and Mairi has Second Sight.”

Kelpie yielded to temptation, made a horrible grimace, and began weaving
mysterious signs in the air with her fingers. Fiona screeched, and
Marsali turned pale. The twins stood their ground, grinning, belligerent,
deeply interested—and just faintly worried.

“Now whatever is all this?” It was Lady Glenfern herself, her full mauve
skirts nearly filling the wide doorway, with Eithne, round-eyed, just
behind.

“Witchcraft!” squeaked Fiona.

Kelpie flushed guiltily and found a sudden lump in her throat. Och, here
was a mess! Why had she done such a foolish thing? All in fun it was,
and yet who would believe her for a minute? Now she would be punished
and sent away—and, for once, for a thing of which she was innocent! The
novelty of the situation was so shattering that for once she lost her
glib tongue. She simply stared at her mistress, her eyes growing wide
with frustration and despair.

The twins and Marsali broke into simultaneous explanations—all slightly
different—with Fiona putting in exclamation points here and there, so
that it was some time before Lady Glenfern could get an idea of what had
happened. When she did, she turned questioningly to Kelpie, who was still
trying to think up some lie that sounded more plausible than the truth.
But Eithne spoke first.

“Och, then, Mother!” she said, laughter and distress in her voice. “She
was teasing; I am sure of it. Look you how the twins are always at her
to cast a spell, and Fiona just begging to be teased by the very look of
her. I am sure that was the way of it! Was it not, Kelpie?”

Kelpie nodded a bit sullenly. This was humiliating. She wished she really
had power to do a wee magic spell and dared show them, just to see their
surprise.

“Well—” Lady Glenfern hesitated, inclined to believe it, but not quite
sure. After all....

At that moment Wee Mairi popped into the kitchen, looking, in her full
skirts, like a fairy child caught in an overblown rose. And, like a fairy
child, she knew instantly that something was wrong, and what to do about
it. She pattered across the floor and slipped her small, soft hand into
Kelpie’s.

“This is _my_ Kelpie,” she announced, smiling angelically at her mother.
“’Tis myself loves her, and you must not be cross at her.”

“There, Mother!” crowed Eithne. “Wee Mairi loves her, and Mairi has the
Second Sight; you said yourself that she is never making a mistake about
a person!”

Lady Glenfern relaxed. “Aye so,” she agreed and smiled at Kelpie. “I can
well see how you were tempted to tease,” she admitted and then became
grave. “But you must be careful, lass. To joke about such matters could
cause you sore trouble.”

Kelpie hardly heard the warning. Her hand was gripping the small one
still protectively clinging to it, and she found herself again seized by
an alarming surge of feeling for its owner. Och, the fair, sweet heart of
her....

Wee Mairi chose this instant to lean confidingly against Kelpie and peer
up with a beguiling smile. “_My_ Kelpie,” she repeated.

And Kelpie was swallowed in a tide of the first real love she had ever
known. She found it extremely upsetting. All her training and experience
warned her that it was dangerous to be trapped into this sort of feeling.
It left one vulnerable, could lead one into foolishness. And here she
was, bewitched, unable to help it! She scowled helplessly.

Lady Glenfern, seeing her distress, mercifully took her from the kitchen
for the rest of the day and set her to work at a simple bit of weaving.
For an hour or so Kelpie sat alone, brooding. Eithne came in for a while
to work at her own more complicated length of Cameron tartan, but Kelpie
was so unsociable that she left again.

And then the twins arrived, dark heads cocked to one side, eyes dancing
at her impishly. “We have found you,” they announced in triumph.

“Fine I know it,” growled Kelpie, refusing to look at them.

Undaunted, they seated themselves on two wee creepie-stools and regarded
her with affable curiosity. “There is a thing that we have in our minds,”
they told her.

“I am doubting that!” snapped Kelpie.

The twins digested this insult and then chuckled. “I am liking you fine,”
said Donald, “even though you are not a witch.”

Kelpie, touched again on that newly sensitive spot, shot the shuttle
through the warp with unnecessary violence and said nothing.

“Why were you saying you are a witch when you are not?” asked Ronald
with interest. “Why,” he continued, getting warmed up, “do Fiona and the
others think you are? Would you like to be? Are you truly Old Mina’s
girl? Is she your Grannie Witchie? If you were a witch, Kelpie, what
would you do first of all?”

“Put a spell of silence on the tongue of you,” retorted Kelpie and found
that her ill humor was beginning to evaporate. It was impossible not to
smile back at their cheeky grins, not to chuckle when they said that
Mother would probably approve such a spell. The atmosphere became quite
congenial.

“I thought you were going fishing,” observed Kelpie.

The twins looked depressed. “We were,” they agreed. “But Father is come
back from seeing Lochiel and told us to bide here for our lessons that we
missed this morning. I think ’twill take him a wee while to find us in
here, whatever,” added Ronald cheerfully, and Kelpie grinned again.

“We are learning about the war between King Charles and Parliament and
the Covenant,” volunteered Donald sadly, “and we could do fine _not_
knowing about it. Grownups are gey confusing, so they are, and sometimes
I think gey foolish besides, and we are not understanding it all very
well.”

“Are you loving King Charles?” demanded Ronald.

“Ou, aye,” murmured Kelpie vaguely and hastened to turn the question.
“Are you?” she countered.

“As ever was!” they chorused instantly. “Is he not our King, and a
Stewart, besides?”

Well, Kelpie had already known that Glenfern was pro-Royalist. “And so
the King is always right?” she pursued, trying to think what else to ask.

“Och, no!” said the twins in surprise. “No one is always right,” they
informed her gravely. “Except,” they added, “for Father.”

Kelpie put her shuttle through the wrong way and had to take it out
again, her lip twitching ever so slightly. The twins, having settled that
subject of conversation, looked at her hopefully. “Can you,” they asked,
“tell us a story?”

Now if there was one thing Kelpie could do better than any other,
it was to tell stories—pathetic tales to earn sympathy or a copper,
outrageous lies to escape impending trouble, embroidered yarns of her own
adventures, old gypsy stories, eerie folk tales of the wee people and
other uncanny beings, or fanciful bits and snatches that she wove for
herself among the hills or beside the campfire. Her eyes sparkled. “Fine
I can that!” she asserted and dropped her voice to an eerie pitch.

“Have you ever,” she whispered, “heard of the _uruisg_ of Glenlyon?”

They shook their heads and drew their stools nearer.

“Well, then.” Kelpie paused, shuttle in hand. “It was a farmer’s wife
who was making porridge for breakfast on a wet morning, when who should
come walking in but an _uruisg_. Och, a slippery, damp, uncouth monster
he was, half man and half goat; and wasn’t he just sitting himself down
at the fire to dry, and not so much as a wee greeting to her? Well, the
farmer’s wife was fair angered at his impertinence, and she having to
step over and around him every minute, so presently she just lifted a
ladle of the boiling porridge from the pot over the fire, and poured it
over him, just. Well, at that he leaped up, howling, and ran out the door
and never dared set foot in that house again....”

When Glenfern finally tracked down his elusive twins some time later,
Kelpie had got very little weaving done, but she had made a place for
herself forever in the hearts of Ronald and Donald.

6. The Picture in the Loch

“’Tis a terrible complicated matter, the war,” objected Eithne doubtfully
as she began basting a sleeve into what was to be a fine linen shirt for
Ian’s birthday. “I fear I’d only be confusing you.”

Kelpie surveyed the four or five yards of red and green tartan wool which
constituted a kilt for a small lad, and wondered how even Donald could
have managed to tear such stout weave. “I could not be more confused than
I am,” she pointed out, “for I am knowing nothing at all. Tell me at
least a little.”

Eithne sighed and obeyed. “Well,” she began hesitantly, “you know that
King Charles is King of England and Scotland both?” Kelpie nodded. “But
in both countries are representative bodies of men called Parliaments,
and they help to rule. They are supposed to agree with the things the
King does, and it is the English parliament who must vote to give him
things like extra money when he needs it—which he usually does.”

She paused to squint critically at her basting, and Kelpie waited.
Somehow she had developed a great eagerness to learn about the matters
which had thrown England and Scotland into civil war. “Aye, go on,” she
murmured.

“Well, so. Neither King Charles nor his father before him has got along
well with Parliament. King and Parliament each said the other will be
trying to take more rights and power than they should have, and they
became angry. Parliament would refuse to vote money for the King, so the
King would dissolve Parliament, which meant that they could not meet any
more to vote on anything at all until King Charles called them back, and
so everyone was unhappy.”

She bit off her thread and held the shirt closer to the dim light
which filtered through the thick diamond-shaped mullion panes of the
casement window. “And then”—she sighed—“religion came into it. Father,”
she remarked severely, “says that religion should never be mixed with
politics, but they do not listen to wise people like Father, and so there
is trouble.”

“What has religion to do with it?” asked Kelpie curiously. She had never
known anything of religion for herself, only that the stern Kirk of the
Lowlands had severe views on all other faiths, on fun and laughter, and
most particularly on witches. But the Anglican services here at Glenfern
seemed peaceful and vaguely pleasant, even though she did not understand
them.

“Och!” protested Eithne, but Kelpie’s face was implacable, so she went
on. “Well, the Catholics and Protestants do not like each other, and
especially the Protestants of the new Reformed Church, like the Puritans
in England and the Calvinist Covenanters in Scotland—and we Anglicans
caught in the middle. King Charles is Anglican, but the Parliament is
mostly Puritan, I think. At any rate, they were very angry when the King
married Queen Henrietta, who is a Roman Catholic and said she would turn
the country all Catholic and burn Protestants at the stake. And the
Catholics said the Protestants were trying to rule the country and force
their religion on everyone, and so it was a fine braw quarrel for years,
with religion and politics all mixed together.”

Kelpie carefully selected a strand of wool to match the soft, dull red of
the Cameron tartan. This was the most difficult bit of mending she had
yet been trusted with. “Mmm,” she murmured after a minute, turning her
mind back to the conversation. “And then?”

It was Eithne’s turn to pause, while the rain beat against the casement
windows. Wee Mairi turned from her doll to lift a merry smile in the
direction of “her Kelpie,” who felt a new pang of affection. Och, the
bonnie wee thing!

Eithne scowled at the shirt and then glanced up at Kelpie with a rueful
shrug. “Ou, I cannot mind me of all the details.” She sighed again. “But
the quarrel turned into fighting.”

“But what of Scotland?” demanded Kelpie. “What had it to do with us at
all?”

“Why,” interrupted the dry voice of Alex, “King Charles himself must be
bringing that on!” They looked up to see him standing in the doorway, a
shirt in his hand and a wry grin on his angular face. “Scotland might
have been loyal to him, even though all the Lowlands are Calvinist, and
even more rigid than the Puritans, but he had the bright idea of forcing
the Anglican prayer book on Scotland. And the next thing he knew, there
was a Solemn League and Covenant formed against him, and Scotland divided
as England was, with Lowlands against the King, and most of the Highlands
loyal to him.”

Eithne looked both relieved and worried, while Kelpie studied Alex’s
expression in the dim light, not quite certain if he were teasing or not.
She decided not—for once. There was a faint note of bitterness in his
voice. “I thought you were a King’s man!” she challenged him.

“I am so,” he returned promptly and unpropped himself from the doorway.
“Look you, Eithne,” he went on, crossing the room to her. “I have ripped
my shirt sorely and am needing a bonnie sweet lass to mend it for me.”

Eithne tilted her chestnut curls at him and wrinkled up her nose in an
impish grin. “If I do,” she said, bargaining, “will you be explaining the
rest of the war to Kelpie?”

“_Dhé!_” said Alex and raised both eyebrows at Kelpie.

“She is truly wanting to know,” said Eithne sternly, “so do not be
teasing her, Alex. And I am gey muddled about it, and you knowing so much
more, with having been at Oxford and even seeing the King and his family
yourself. Will you?”

“’Tis a hard bargain,” complained Alex, “and I am thinking I pity the
man who will one day marry you, Eithne _m’eudail_.” He perched on the
corner of the massive table, his kilt falling in heavy folds about his
lean knees. “Well, then, and what bit of my great knowledge should I be
sharing with you first?”

Kelpie gave him a wicked pointed smile. “Tell me,” she said softly, “in
one word, just, _what are they fighting for?_”

“My sorrow!” exclaimed Alex, straightening up as if he had sat on a
thistle. “Is that all?”

“Don’t you know?” asked Kelpie tauntingly. “I will tell you, then.
They’re fighting for power. Is it not so?”

Alex resumed his perch and surveyed her ruefully. “Och, and are you
not the young cynic!” he observed. “And you have shocked my foster
sister, too.” For Eithne was looking both dismayed and indignant. Both
girls had forgotten their sewing for the moment and sat staring at Alex
challengingly, waiting for his opinion.

He laughed. “I fear me I shall anger you both,” he remarked, “and go
through the rest of my life with an evil spell on my head and a tom
sleeve in my shirt.”

“Well?” demanded Kelpie.

Alex gave her a crooked grin. “Sorry I am to agree with you even in
part,” he confessed, “but no doubt some men are fighting for power.
No, no, Eithne,” he added as she opened her mouth. “Do not deny it too
quickly. What about Argyll?”

Eithne subsided.

“On the other hand, Alex _avic_, there is Montrose.” It was Ian. He
pulled up a hassock and ranged himself quietly but firmly on Eithne’s
side.

“Montrose?” asked Kelpie.

“Aye,” said Ian, turning his warm smile upon her. “James Graham of
Montrose, and he one of the finest, truest men under the sun. He it is
who is named to fight for the King’s cause in Scotland, even to form and
organize the army. And he is fighting for no selfish reason whatever, but
only for what he believes to be right. Alex cannot deny it, for we both
met and talked to him last winter in Oxford.”

“Indeed and I’ll not deny it,” agreed Alex amiably, “though Kelpie might.
My point was just that all men are not like Montrose, and my proof of
it is still Argyll. Och, and have you done, my sonsie Eithne?” he added
as she held up the mended shirt. “Come away, then, Ian, and let’s be
outside. I believe the sun is going to come out.”

And they were gone before Kelpie could ask about Argyll. Perhaps it was
as well, she decided, going back to her mending. For she really thought
she had heard quite as much as she could absorb all in one lump.

Eithne flickered a mischievous sideways glance at her. “And wasn’t I
warning you ’twas complicated?” she murmured.

As if by tacit agreement, no one brought up matters like war and politics
for some time. After all, it was easy enough, in that peaceful, secluded
glen, to put such things far out of mind. Kelpie’s free hours were full
enough, as spring days became longer, with other things. Wee Mairi
tagged along with her, a self-appointed guardian, and the glenspeople
had learned to hide their hostility when Mairi was there. The twins were
insatiably hungry for more stories—and so, for that matter, were the
older young people. Books were rare and precious, and mostly devoted to
serious and difficult subjects. And, as Ian generously remarked on a
sunny afternoon by the loch, Kelpie was a master at telling tales.

Alex grinned impishly. “She is that!” he agreed with a wicked twinkle in
his eye and a double meaning to his voice which Kelpie chose to ignore.

“Next time I will tell you about the _sithiche_ (fairies) of Loch
Maree—_if_ you are all very kind to me,” she said blandly and glanced
impudently at Alex.

She sat on alone by the loch for a little while after the others had
left, thinking about things. How Alex had changed since she first met
him! He was much nicer than she had thought. And she had begun to like
his teasing and mockery, for it was all good-humored.... Or was it
perhaps herself had changed? And if so—She rolled over to lie full-length
on her face in the fragrant long grasses and pondered. Then, lazily, she
stretched until her head was over the edge of the loch.

What was her real self like? Had that changed? Could it?

The bank at this point rose abruptly about two feet above the glassy
surface of the water, with tough curling roots of heather overhanging
the edge. Kelpie reached down skillfully, scooped up a handful of the
cold water, and drank it from her palm before it could run through
her fingers. The surface rippled slightly and returned to its mirror
stillness, with sky, hills, and trees reflected so clearly that it would
be hard to tell the reflection from the real. Or was one, perhaps, as
real as the other?

She stared down at her own face, still looking indecently bare with all
the thick dark hair pulled back into plaits. Was that any less real—or
more—than the scenes she saw in Mina’s crystal?

And then it was no longer her own face she was seeing, but a town
street and an ugly-tempered crowd surging down it. Not merely annoyed,
that crowd, but murderous. Kelpie shivered a little, for she knew too
well how bestial a mob could be. And this one had a victim, for there
was savage satisfaction in the grim Lowland faces above their sober
Covenanter garments, pressing closer and closer.... And there was Ian!
Whatever could he be doing in the Lowlands? Pushing through the crowd, he
was; and Alex came after, shouting at him, his angular face all twisted
with fury. And now they were closer, and Alex was catching up to Ian....
Alex was lifting his sword, and through the crowd Kelpie could see him
bring it down savagely.... _Dhé!_ Ian had fallen, his dark head vanished
in the throng! And Alex’s sword with blood on it!

Kelpie jerked with horror, and a bit of dry heather plopped into the
water—and the picture was gone. Nor did it return, though she waited,
staring at the still water and brooding bitterly.

_Dhé!_ That serpent Alex! She had never liked him from the beginning!
And now he was going to turn on his foster brother, strike him down from
behind, perhaps kill him—for the Sight never lied.

She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter to her, but it was too
late. Ian had crept into her heart, and Wee Mairi, and the rest of them.
Even Alex, deceitful scoundrel that he was, had somehow tricked her into
liking him—for a while, anyway. But now she knew better. Och, she must
try to warn Ian! Even if he could not prevent it, perhaps he could be on
his guard, could put off the evil day of it, could duck in time to save
his life.

Dismayed, angry, resolute, Kelpie got to her feet, smoothed down the full
folds of her blue dress, and started back up the loch.

Now what, wondered Alex, had got under the skin of their wolf cub lately?
For there was a new venom toward himself—and after he had been thinking
her nearly tamed, too. Aye, a wolf cub: belligerent, cunning, snarling,
biting, thieving, destructive—and yet innocent, as a wolf cub is innocent
because it knows nothing else.

But she had been changing. She had been learning trust and affection,
even to play and tease. And now, suddenly, there was a new and deadly
hatred smoldering at him from those ringed eyes. It was puzzling, it
was, and rather less amusing than her old spitting indignation had
been; and even though it could hardly be a tragedy to him, still it was
disconcerting. Alex kept a wary eye on her, lest she should decide to
take her _sgian dhu_ to his back.

As for Kelpie, she found the business of warning Ian a bit harder than
it had seemed. For one thing, it was none so easy to find him alone, for
he and Alex were usually together and about their own affairs, while
Kelpie had her tasks in the house. In the evenings the family sat
together in the withdrawing room, which was not Kelpie’s place. The big
warm kitchen, or her wee cot in Marsali’s room, was where she belonged,
or—more often—away by herself outside, in the pale half-light of the long
northern gloaming. For summer was drawing near, and darkness now merely
brushed down late upon the world and, like a gull’s wing, quickly lifted.

So she glared at Alex and did her tasks and kept her eyes and ears open
and bided her time. And at last Alex went off for a few days to visit his
brother in Ardochy. And the next evening Kelpie, on one of her rambles,
saw Ian on the hill above her, quietly looking down over the glen.

Kelpie drew near, and then paused. Och, a braw lad he was! But how might
she be approaching him best? It might be he wanted to be alone. Before
she could decide, Ian saw her, smiled, beckoned, his face oddly blurred
in the half-light that turned all things gray. She sat beside him and for
a minute followed his gaze over the long shadowed cup of the glen, lit by
the silver gleam of Loch nan Eilean.

Finally Ian stirred and spoke. “I wish I might never need to leave it
again,” he said wistfully.

Did he love it so? Kelpie dimly sensed that he did; but she did not
understand, for she herself had no roots to her heart, but only a
wanderlust to her feet. “And must you, then?” she asked. Why could Ian
not be doing as he pleased, since he was the heir to Glenfern?

“Aye so,” he said, a bit more briskly. “For I must finish my schooling
if I am to be a fit chieftain and leader to my people. However”—he
brightened considerably—“I think we’ll not be able to return to Oxford
for some time, with the war moving northward and becoming more serious,
and Argyll endangering all the Highlands.”

Now was the moment for her to warn him about Alex. But it was also a
chance to ask about Argyll and put off the more difficult thing. “Tell me
about Argyll!” she urged.

Ian turned to look at her with friendly interest. “You’ve a good head on
you, haven’t you, Kelpie? Mother says you’re quick to learn and that you
speak English as well as Gaelic. Are you truly interested in national
affairs, then?” Kelpie nodded.

“Well, then,” began Ian, “you know who Argyll is, do you not? Mac Cailein
Mor, Chief of Clan Campbell in the Highlands, and also head of the
Covenant Army of the Lowlands. So he has that power added to the power
of his own clan, and he uses it ill, Kelpie. He is a vicious man, cruel,
ambitious, and vindictive.”

Kelpie could not resist a gibe. “And is he not also a Campbell, and his
clan at feud with yours?” she remarked.

Ian flushed. Even in the dusk she could see it. “’Tis not that!” he
protested. “I am not one to hate a man for his name, Kelpie! And in any
case, my own uncle married a Campbell lass; and the son of Lochiel, our
own clan chief, married Argyll’s sister, and we are anxious to be at
peace. But Argyll, devil that he is, wishes to dictate his own terms
entirely. Do you know what he has done, Kelpie? He has taken his nephew
Ewen—Lochiel’s own grandson, who will be chief of the Camerons some
day—and is keeping him at his own castle of Inverary. He says he wishes
to see to his education—and I can guess what kind of education ’twill
be—but do you see that Ewen is hostage for Lochiel’s actions? And if
Lochiel dares to take the side of the King against Argyll—”

“Mmmm,” said Kelpie, seeing.

“Nor is it just our clan,” Ian went on, deep anger in his voice. “He
was commissioned to secure the Highlands for the Covenant, which is bad
enough, for we have not tried to inflict our politics or religion on
them. But Argyll has used his commission and the Lowland army to settle
his private grudges. He burned the great house of Airly, with no enemy
there but a helpless woman. And he burned and ravaged the lands of
MacDonald of Keppoch, and is even now laying waste the lands of Gordon of
Huntly. They say he would make himself King Campbell, and a black day for
Scotland if he should.”

Kelpie remembered the face she had seen once in the crystal, which Mina
had called Mac Cailein Mor, Marquis of Argyll. A cold, cruel face it
had been, with twisted sneering mouth, a heavy and pendulous nose, and a
squint in the crafty eyes of him, so that one couldn’t be just sure what
he was looking at.

“Aye,” she agreed suddenly. “He is a red-haired _uruisg_. I have been
seeing him helping with his own hands to fire the homes and burn people
too.” She didn’t add that the people burned were accused of witchcraft,
as this might not be a tactful thing to mention.

“You’ve seen that?” exclaimed Ian.

“In the crystal, only,” confessed Kelpie. “I was also seeing him mounting
the scaffold to be hanged,” she remembered with relish. “But,” she added
regretfully, “he was looking much older then.”

“_Dhé!_” exclaimed Ian, deeply impressed. “I did not know you were having
the Second Sight, Kelpie.”

“Aye,” said Kelpie. And here was her opening. “Ian!” she blurted, quite
forgetting to give him a respectful title. “You must not be trusting Alex
MacDonald.”

“Not trust Alex?” Ian turned a dumfounded face to hers. And then he
laughed. “Och, Kelpie, there is no one in the world I trust better! We
are sworn brothers, and if my life were to rest in the two hands of him,
there is no place I would sooner have it.”

“And you would lose it, then,” said Kelpie flatly. “For I had a Seeing,
and his sword fell upon you from behind, and you fell. And there was
anger on his face and blood upon his sword.”

Ian’s face was a pale blob in the dusk, and she could not see it turn
white—and yet she knew, somehow, that it did. For the Second Sight never
lied.

And in spite of that, Ian shook his head. “I cannot believe it, Kelpie,”
he said quietly. “It is a mistake, for the sun would fall from the sky
before Alex could be untrue.”

Kelpie thrust an angry face, long eyes glittering, close to his. “You
think I am lying, but I am not. I would have been warning you, even
though it is of no profit to me, whatever. But it is a spell he has cast
upon you! And,” she added bitterly, “you will be discovering it too
late.”

7. The Return of Mina and Bogle

Summer was upon the Highlands. The serene curves of the hills glowed with
a hundred shades of green and tawny and rose, all with a faintly unreal,
spirit-of-opal quality, so that the distances looked no more solid than a
rainbow.

Kelpie breathed the salt wind as she climbed higher above the glen, and
stared hungrily at the distant hills. For she was beginning to feel
restless. A wee glen was not space enough, and there were too many
people, too much routine, and she must away to the hills to be alone.
Here were only the mild shaggy cattle peering mournfully from behind long
fringes of hair, and the hares and red deer, the hill larks and whaups
and gulls, and an eagle—high and alone in the free air.

Her acute senses had been lulled by the months of security at Glenfern,
and she was startled to see the bent, wiry figure of Mina rise
unexpectedly from behind a clump of juniper.

They looked at each other, and Kelpie’s expression could not possibly
have been mistaken for delight. Mina took one good look at it, swung back
her strong, scrawny arm, and aimed it at Kelpie.

It seemed that Kelpie’s reactions as well as her senses had become rusty.
She didn’t duck in time. And, since Mina had fully expected her to, the
resounding smack startled and pained them both.

Mina shook her stinging hand and glared at Kelpie as if the girl had done
it on purpose. Kelpie, her head ringing, glared back. And Black Bogle,
who had appeared as silently as his eerie namesake, shook with malicious
laughter.

“_Amadain!_” grumbled Mina sourly. “Forgotten everything you ever knew!
Fine-lady clothes and clean face, and hands that will have lost all their
cunning—such as it was. Blind and deaf and slow as a sleeping snail.
_Amadain!_”

“Sssss!” remarked Kelpie, looking and sounding like a wrathful snake. She
had forgotten how ugly and mean and dirty Mina was. Och, how she hated
her!

Mina looked pleased. She enjoyed Kelpie’s impotent hatred. And Kelpie,
knowing this, controlled her feelings and hooded her eyes and made her
sharp-jawed small mouth curl upward. She had been a fool to show her
feelings at all at all!

“Come away, then,” ordered Mina, suddenly becoming brisk. “You have kept
us waiting long enough! Why weren’t you coming as soon as you got my
message?”

“What message?” asked Kelpie blankly. Mina’s eyes blazed with fury and
humiliation. Bogle laughed aloud, and Kelpie knew that Mina had tried to
send her a message by magic—and it hadn’t worked. Och, but she must say
something quickly, or no telling what Mina might do!

“It would be yon red-haired serpent down there,” she said improvising
hastily. “He was no doubt setting up a spell to prevent your message from
reaching me. Teach me to say spells, Mina,” she wheedled, “so that I may
set one on him.”

It worked. Mina’s pride was saved, and her wrath turned from Kelpie to
Alex. “I will be cursing him myself,” she growled. “He is the same one
who would not pay me enough when you were hurt, and who would not let you
steal? Very well so! He will pay, and the others as well. We will go now
and demand your wages before you leave.”

Leave? Kelpie’s heart sank. Back to the old life of fear, hatred,
beatings? Away from Wee Mairi and Ian and the companionship and teasing?
She backed up a step and braced herself.

“What for should I want to leave?” She stuck out her jaw rebelliously,
and Mina slapped it.

“Because I am saying so!” she snarled. “And because I will put an evil
curse on you if you do not obey.”

Kelpie prudently pulled in her smarting jaw and considered this. On one
hand, Mina was not as powerful as Kelpie had thought, for she almost
certainly could not read the crystal alone, and her magic message had
failed to get through. But that was not to say she could not curse.
Kelpie still had great faith in the power of Mina’s evil spells. And
Mina’s curse would be even more disagreeable than her company. Kelpie
brooded darkly over the unpleasant alternatives before her, almost
inclined to risk the curse.

“Why would you not want to come?” demanded Mina, and her cursing changed
to wheedling. “And here I have been to the trouble of arranging for you
to learn witchcraft at last, ungrateful wretch that you are, then! What,
would you stay to be a slave to arrogant fools such as these? Stupid
sheep, spending their lives shut in a wee glen?”

“They do not, then,” muttered Kelpie mutinously. “Ian and Alex have been
to school in England in a place called Oxford, and have seen the King and
Montrose and know more than we about affairs. And they do not beat me,
nor make me steal for them and then set the crowd on me. And I do not
believe you plan to teach me witchcraft, whatever, for you are always
promising it and never do it.”

Mina’s face darkened, and she raised a scrawny, strong arm again, but
Bogle loomed over her and drew her aside to speak for a moment in a
voice like distant thunder. Kelpie watched apprehensively. When Bogle
intervened, it was never for motives of kindness and charity.

“Hah!” Mina cackled presently and turned back to Kelpie. “And what of the
wee bittie lass we were seeing you playing with so tenderly this morning?
Shall I put a curse on her, too? Aye, on all the glen I shall put the
Evil Eye, so that they will all wither up and die horrible deaths!”

Kelpie’s defiance collapsed like a deflated bagpipe. Not Wee Mairi!
She could not bear to risk harm for her bonnie bairn. But she must not
let Mina know how vulnerable she was on this point, or she would be in
slavery and Wee Mairi in danger forever more! Carefully keeping her face
impassive, she shrugged indifferently. “Och, well, just do not be putting
it on me,” she murmured, and noted that both Mina and Bogle looked
disappointed. “And will you truly be teaching me witchcraft if I come?”
she demanded, as if this were her only interest.

“Have I not said so?” Mina growled. “Was it trying to drive a hard
bargain you were, then? I should beat you for it! Come away down, now,
for we have wasted too much time already.” And she led the way down the
hill.

It was the twins who first spotted the assorted trio approaching, and
they began to shout excitedly.

“Kelpie, is yon your Grannie Witchie? Father, Ian, come and see!” they
yelled in full voice. And then, short kilts swinging, they raced up the
slope to stare at Mina and Bogle with frank, fearless curiosity.

“Are you truly a witch?” demanded Ronald, and, in spite of her gloom,
Kelpie stifled a grin at the look on Mina’s face.

The old woman drew herself up and glared at them. “Best not be asking
that!” she warned in an ominous croak that should have completely cowed
them, but didn’t.

“Why not?” asked Ronald with great interest. “What will happen if we do?
Do you not think, Donald, that she looks like a witch?”

“Ou, aye,” declared Donald judiciously. “But we have not seen her casting
any spells yet. Can you cast spells, Grannie Witchie?”

Kelpie’s amusement changed to apprehension as the infuriated Mina
spluttered speechlessly. It was probably only her speechlessness and the
timely arrival of Glenfern that saved the twins from an awful fate. Mina
gave them one last baleful glare—Kelpie fervently hoped it wasn’t the
Evil Eye—and turned to the tall chieftain. Kelpie glanced at him, and
at Ian, Eithne, and Alex, who arrived just then from down by the loch,
and then stared sullenly at the ground. She dared not look straight at
them, for if they were to read her eyes and guess how she felt, then
they would refuse to let her go, and so Mina’s curse would be upon them.
And now Kelpie found that her old misgivings were justified. She had
recklessly given her affection and left herself vulnerable, so now she
must suffer the consequences. Angrily she promised herself never to be so
weak again.

“Well, then,” said Glenfern pleasantly at last. “And are you leaving us,
Kelpie?” She jerked her head, not looking at him. “I am sorry to hear
it,” he said gently, “for I think you were happy here, and we have come
to like you well.”

“Oh, Kelpie!” Eithne protested, shrinking a little from Mina and Bogle.
“Can you not stay?”

“Och, you cannot go!” clamored the twins in outrage. “Who will be telling
us stories now?”

Kelpie scowled, chewed her lip, and wished herself a thousand miles away.
And worse was to come, for a brief glance upward showed her that all of
them, from Mina to the twins, were on the verge of guessing her true
feelings. She tossed her head and gave a hard little laugh. “Och, I’m
away,” she said airily, “for I’ve bided too long in one place.”

Glenfern was looking at her keenly. “You are welcome to stay, you know,”
he told her.

“Aye, to slave for you without pay!” whined Mina in her most put-upon
voice. If she had been slow to the attack, she made up for it now. “We
have come to have her wages.”

From under her lashes Kelpie saw the hurt on Eithne’s face, and something
like pity on Ian’s. Only Alex wore a look of acid amusement that set
Kelpie’s teeth on edge. And Glenfern was giving Mina the same stern look
he used when the twins had been naughty.

“I think you must be joking,” he said quietly. “We have treated this lass
far better than ever you have done. We have fed her properly, clothed her
in decent, clean garments, taught her, given her affection and a roof
over her head and a bed under her. What have you ever given her save harm
and neglect?”

“She is ours!” Mina squealed angrily, but she must have seen that she
would get nowhere, for she suddenly changed tactics. “Would you be
wanting Mac Cailein Mor to hear things about you?” she hinted softly.
“Things about how you are favoring King Charles, and what you think of
the Covenant, and your own son associating with the King and bringing
back messages from him, and from Montrose as well, perhaps?”

There was only one way Mina could have learned these things. Everyone
looked at Kelpie, who stuck out her chin and grinned brazenly. Ou, the
wicked, careless tongue of her, to be telling Mina that! Ian and Eithne
were looking as if she had slapped them. There was a smile on Alex’s lean
face and scorn in his eyes.

“And so you have not really changed at all,” he observed softly, and
was surprised at the bitterness of his own disappointment. After all,
what else had he expected? But his tongue went on scathingly. “Selfish,
faithless, unscrupulous you are and always will be. You could never think
of inconveniencing yourself for the good of another, could you, Kelpie?”

“Of course not,” said Kelpie defiantly, but the sweet face of Wee Mairi
was warm and mocking in her heart.

“Let be, Alex.” Ian sighed. “She cannot help it. There was not enough
time to change old habits.”

“Nor ever will be,” retorted Alex.

Kelpie hissed at him venomously. “Faithless yourself!” she spat. “Do not
be forgetting what I told you, Ian!” And she turned away to Glenfern, who
was laughing at Mina.

“By all means go to Argyll,” he said cheerfully. “Tell him whatever you
like. He knows well enough where our sympathies lie. But leave the lass
behind you when you go, for I should not like her to be burned as a witch
along with the two of you. And now, farewell. I am sorry,” he added,
turning to Kelpie, “that you could not stay with us, poor lass. Remember
that we wish you well.”

That was really almost too much. Kelpie turned abruptly and started up
the pass with Mina and Bogle, who knew when they were defeated. At least
it was over, and she must just put it away out of her memory.

But it was not quite over. Halfway up the hill a small voice wailed
after her. She turned to see Wee Mairi tugging at Eithne’s hand, one
small arm stretched out and upward. “My Kelpie!” she shrilled. “Do not go
away, my Kelpie!”

Mina’s pale eyes were upon Kelpie, narrowed, watchful, suspicious. Kelpie
set her jaw, hardened her face, and deliberately turned her back on the
broken-hearted little figure below.

The next few miles were blurred. Kelpie tramped mechanically behind Mina
and Bogle, unseeing, trying to wipe three months out of her life and
become the person she had been before. Och, she had been right to begin
with! A feckless, foolish thing it was to care for anyone, and only hurt
could come from it. From now on she would be hard as the granite sides of
Ben Nevis, which now loomed ahead, snow still patching its sheer northern
side. She would be what Alex thought her—and a pox on him, too. Nor would
she even care that he would strike down that braw lad Ian, for Ian had
had his warning, and it was his own fault if he was too stupid to heed it.

Scowling, she kicked at an inoffensive clump of bluebells and
deliberately stepped on a wild yellow iris. She would become a witch,
then; not a “coven witch,” either. She had seen them—silly people, who
made a great ceremony of selling their souls to the Devil and met in
groups of thirteen, called covens, and held Black Mass, and did a great
deal of wild dancing. Mina said these were little more than playing at
witchcraft and learned only a few simple spells. No, now, Kelpie would
be a witch of the old sort, who needed no bargains with Satan, but who
tapped a Power that was old before the beginnings of Christianity.
A Power it was that could be used for either black or white magic,
but Kelpie had seen little of the white, and black seemed much more
congenial, especially in her present mood.

She drifted into her old dream of what she would do one day to Mina and
Bogle. Aye, and perhaps she would just add Alex as well. They were over
the pass and heading south along the side of Loch Lochy before she came
back to herself and began to wonder about the present.

“Where is it we are going now?” she demanded, moving up to walk beside
Mina, half off the narrow path. “When will you be teaching me witchcraft?
What are you planning?”

Mina cast a thoughtful eye at Kelpie’s blue dress, now kilted up through
her belt for easier walking. “I think that would be fitting me,” she
remarked casually. “We will be telling you what you will need to know
when it is the right time for knowing it,” she added so mildly that
Kelpie looked at her with dark suspicion.

Falling behind once more, she began again to brood over her life. It
consisted of being pushed from one situation into another. It was
other folk who acted, and herself who reacted, who was acted upon.
Was she, then, such a spineless creature? Was her whole life to be
molded by others? Rebellion once more rose in her, but then subsided
as she remembered the two-pronged stick that Mina held over her—nay,
three-pronged, really. She could curse Kelpie, and she could curse Wee
Mairi and Ian and the other folk of Glenfern, and only Mina could teach
Kelpie witchcraft. And witchcraft, now, had become the only goal in her
life, the only hope of escaping the hateful mastery of Mina and Bogle.
Kelpie set her teeth, and the look on her face was neither pleasant nor
attractive.

Down to the tip of Loch Lochy and on down the river they plodded, past
the home of Glenfern’s chief, Lochiel; and at last they made camp for the
night in the old unfinished castle of Inverlochy. Roofless it was, and
built four-square, with a round tower at each corner, and Kelpie narrowed
her eyes thoughtfully as they went in. Mina and Bogle never looked for
walls about them, except sometimes in the cold of winter. What was afoot?

For the moment there was no time to wonder. Mina nodded brusquely at the
river, which flowed just outside the arched stone entrance. “Gather us
firewood,” she ordered, “and then guddle us some fish—if you have not
forgotten how.” Her pale eyes rested again on Kelpie’s dress, and Bogle
chuckled.

An hour or so later, annoyed but not in the least astonished, Kelpie
wiped her greasy fingers on the dirty rags which now covered her, and
glowered across the fire at Mina. The hag and the blue dress were more or
less the same size, but of far different shapes. The dress sagged across
the front of Mina’s hunched shoulders and strained ominously across the
back, and was at once too long and too narrow in the waist, and the cuffs
reached in vain for those long bony wrists. Kelpie had a mental picture
of bright hazel eyes dancing in wicked amusement in an angular red-topped
face. For once she could have appreciated Alex’s sense of humor, and her
own white teeth showed momentarily in a matching grin.

Mina glared at her suspiciously, and Kelpie hastily stopped grinning.
_Dhé!_ Mina was almost as bad as Alex himself at seeing what she
shouldn’t! And she mustn’t anger Mina too much—not yet! So she lowered
her slanted eyes more or less submissively and waited.

“Hah!” said Mina suddenly. “You think I am not knowing what you are
thinking?”

Kelpie devoutly hoped not. She had no desire to be turned into a toad or
something equally unpleasant. Best to walk warily—neither too innocent
nor too defiant. “I am wondering what you are about,” she retorted
sullenly. “I have learned the things you were wanting me to, but you have
not told me why, nor have you taught me any spells.”

“Hah!” said Mina again. “First we will read the crystal.”

And presently, under the ghost-light of the summer night, Kelpie sat
again with her hand in Mina’s horny claw and gazed into the blank crystal
ball. It remained still and empty. “I see myself,” invented Kelpie
impudently. “It is in a place that I have never been, and I am wearing a
blue dress—”

Mina turned on her in sudden suspicion, and Kelpie prepared to duck. But
they were distracted by a small flicker of light that came from an upper
window of one of the castle towers. For an instant, fear gripped Kelpie.
Was it an uncanny creature of some sort? Then she noticed that Bogle was
nowhere in sight, and she chewed her lip thoughtfully.

Sure enough, presently his shadowy figure emerged from the tower door. He
came back to the fire and sat down without a word. But Kelpie thought she
had seen him put something in his new leather sporran (recently stolen,
without doubt), and there passed between him and Mina a long look and the
tiniest of nods.

Kelpie pretended to notice nothing, but her mind was busy. It couldn’t
have been magic he was up to, for Bogle did no magic except for ordinary
curses. It must have been a message, then—a message left for him here,
and they had known where to look for it. And that was why they camped in
the castle instead of out in the open.

Och, there was something in the air, indeed and indeed! Kelpie went to
sleep wondering what it might be—and how she might be turning it to her
own advantage.

8. A Task for Kelpie

From Inverlochy Castle they headed southeast, around the tip of Loch
Leven and into the lands of the Stewarts of Glencoe. Now they definitely
turned southward. Kelpie frowned.

“Will we be going into Campbell country, then?” she asked, faintly
alarmed. For the last time they had ventured into Argyll’s lands there
had been an all too exciting witch hunt from which they had barely
escaped, so it must be an important matter indeed that would bring Mina
and Bogle back again into danger.

Mina just grunted disagreeably, but by the next day Kelpie’s question was
answered, for they reached Loch Etive, which was well into Campbell land.
Mina glanced around nervously, and Kelpie again wondered where they were
going, and why. Bogle stood for a moment, staring down the loch, then
turned and purposefully led the way to the precise spot where the River
Etive entered the northernmost tip. Clearly he knew exactly where he was
going. And then Kelpie saw what must be the reason for this journey. A
man sat waiting for them in a copse of alder near the river, looking
oddly out of place in the sober gray breeches of a Lowlander.

“Aweel,” he said and looked at them. Kelpie’s sharp eyes took in every
detail of the stocky long-armed figure, with sandy hair cropped to
its ears, and sandy eyebrows looking too thin for the broad face. She
did not like what she saw, and even less what she felt. For there was
no expression at all on the Lowlander’s face. His eyes were like cold
pebbles, and there was a malignance about him that made her shrink inside.

Suddenly Kelpie knew that he must be a warlock. Mina and Bogle would not
be merely working with him; they were under his orders. Probably it was
he who was behind Mina’s interest in politics, Kelpie’s long stay at
Glenfern, this hurried trip. Och, it was a powerful and evil man, this,
and she would do well to fear him.

The small opaque eyes studied her for a moment and then turned to Mina,
who looked small and shrunken before them. “Is yon the lass?” Their owner
demanded in the burred English of Glasgow.

Mina nodded, and the eyes turned back to Kelpie. “Come here!” he
commanded.

Kelpie had a passionate desire to assert her own will and refuse. But it
would be daft to try to challenge his power now—and especially with Mina
and Bogle watching her. Reluctantly, her own eyes smoldering with anger
and foreboding, she went and stood before him, and he seemed to read her
thoughts.

“So, ye’d like tae be a witch,” he said, his voice half a sneer, half a
caress. “Tae hae sich power, ye maun learn tae obey. Obey! Ye didna ken
that, eh? Weel—ailbins ye can prove yersel’ the noo, and earn the powers
ye’re wanting.” He turned to Mina again. “Hae ye told her?”

Mina shook her head humbly. “Never a word.”

“Good. She’ll hear it the noo,” returned the Lowlander. He turned back
to Kelpie, whose small face regarded him with wary intensity. His face
became genial and fatherly. “Ye’re a lucky lass,” he began, “tae hae us
a’ so concerned wi’ yer ain guid.”

Kelpie laughed aloud, and there was genuine amusement as well as derision
in her laughter. Did they think her a bairn, and daft as well?

At once the Lowlander became brisk and businesslike. Very well, then, he
conceded, perhaps it was not merely her own good they were after. But she
would profit greatly. Who, he demanded, was her worst enemy?

Kelpie prudently did not name Mina and Bogle. Instead, she remembered
Mina’s deep interest of late and made a shrewd guess at the answer he
expected. “Mac Cailein Mor?”

“Aye, Argyll,” he said approvingly and went on to point out why. The
Kirk of the Covenant was reaching farther and farther into the Highlands
now, with its persecution of honest witches, and even of stupid old folk
who were not witches at all, for that matter. And who was head of the
Covenant? Who was spearhead of the persecutions, the pricking and torture
and burnings? Argyll. If he was not stopped, there would be no safe place
in all Scotland for such as they.

Kelpie nodded and found part of her mind thinking that on this one point
only—Argyll and the Covenant—did her world and that of Glenfern agree.

Very well, then, the Lowlander continued. They must take steps to destroy
Argyll. And what better thing than a hex? A wee image of him, in clay or
wax, they would make. And then they would stick pins in it, roast it,
freeze it, pour poison over it, and, by the black powers of witchcraft,
all these things would happen to Mac Cailein Mor himself, until at last
he would die in great pain.

Again Kelpie nodded warily. And how did she enter into all this, at all?

She found out soon enough. In order to make a really effective hex
on Argyll, something from himself was needed to mold into the wax
figure—hair or fingernail clippings, preferably. And who was to obtain
them? Why, Kelpie, of course.

Now it was clear why she had been left at Glenfern to learn the ways of
gentry and how to be a servant. She would hire herself as housemaid at
Inverary Castle and, as soon as she managed to get the hair or fingernail
clippings, just come away back here with them. And as a reward she would
be taught all she wished to know about spells, potions, curses—even the
Evil Eye itself.

As easy as that!

They were making her their tool again, of course, to do what they dared
not do themselves. If she were caught, her life would not be worth a
farthing. Still—Kelpie thought quickly behind narrowed eyes and an
impassive face. It was a chance to get away from Mina and Bogle and
perhaps take a hand in managing her own life. Once away in Inverary, she
could decide whether or not to carry out the errand. Perhaps she would
prefer Mac Cailein Mor to Mina and just stay for a while. Or perhaps....
Well, she would see.

She listened with great docility as they explained how she could get in
touch with them once she had completed her task. She even nodded when
the Lowlander suggested blandly that it might just be safest to send the
hair—or half of it—on to them by the messenger they would tell her of,
and then she herself could be bringing the rest later. Kelpie kept a
sneer from crossing her face. If they thought her so witless as that, let
them, then! But if and when she came to them, it would be with the hair
hidden in a safe place, and they having to fulfill their part of the
bargain before they saw it.

The Lowlander was very pleased with her, and Kelpie went to bed very
pleased with herself. But she awoke near dawn with the sense of something
bothering her.

The sky was a vast aching void, neither black nor light. The world was
a great shadow. Kelpie crept silently away from the camp and over the
crest of the nearest rise, still wrapped in the old woolen plaidie which
served as cloak and blanket. She seated herself against the thickness of
a rhododendron, so that she was lost in the black shadows of its great
leaves and blossoms. Then she stared down along the long, steely sheet of
Loch Etive and began to think.

Obey, the Lowlander had said—and clearly Mina and Bogle were obeying him.
But Kelpie had thought that to be a witch was to be free, to have power
to command others, never to _be_ commanded again by anyone.

Was it not so, after all? Did the Lowlander, in turn, obey someone—or
Something? For an instant Kelpie sensed something infinitely dangerous
and horrible. Was Satan merely another name for those ancient Dark
Powers? And was the price for invoking them to be a slave to them? She
shuddered, and cold droplets of sweat broke out on her short upper lip.

Then she pulled herself together. She must not give in to foolish
worries. The Lowlander was a fearsome man, but witchcraft was the only
way to be free of Mina, and when she had learned it she need fear neither
of them any longer.

All the same, the first seed of doubt had taken root, and it no longer
seemed quite so easy to become the most powerful witch in Scotland. It
was a rather subdued Kelpie who meekly cooked the fish and oatcakes for
breakfast, bade the Lowlander farewell, and followed Bogle and Mina on to
Loch Awe.

At a ruined old shieling hut by the loch they stopped and waited for a
day, until there came a round-faced young woman with a wealth of brown
hair and a slate-colored dress kilted up over a striped petticoat. She
seemed an unlikely person to be working with witches and warlocks, for
her bright-cheeked smile was quite artless.

“_Dhia dhuit!_” She beamed. “Is this the lass who will be fetching the
hair to hex Mac Cailein Mor, may the demons fly away with him? I am Janet
Campbell, who will take you to Inverary. I will call you Sheena at once,”
she added chattily, “so you can get used to it, for Mrs. MacKellar would
never be hiring a lass named for a kelpie.” She chuckled cheerfully.

Kelpie gave her an appraising look from under her thick black lashes, but
Janet didn’t seem in the least put out. “I could not be doing the task
myself,” she explained, “for I have my work, and no reason to be going
into the castle. And,” she added forthrightly, “I am not brave or clever
enough. But I will be your messenger, Sheena, when you need me.”

Kelpie, more and more resentful of being used by others, nodded sullenly.
But Janet’s next words cheered her considerably.

“She cannot be asking for work in such rags,” pointed out that young
woman matter-of-factly. “They would know her for a gypsy at once, and Mac
Cailein Mor has a fearful hatred of such. Best be giving her your blue
dress to wear, Mina.”

Bogle chuckled, and Kelpie hid her satisfaction behind a blank face.
Mina snarled and gave in. The string of epithets she flung at Kelpie
along with the dress hardly amounted to an objection at all, and Kelpie’s
earlier misgivings rose again briefly. If even the formidable Mina was so
meekly obeying, then what power this Lowlander must have!

She was still brooding on this as she and Janet set out on the last bit
of the journey, her cheek still stinging from Mina’s farewell cuff. On
down Loch Awe, and to the wild steepness of Glen Aray, and along that
gash in the hills toward Loch Fyne, Janet led the way sturdily enough,
although Kelpie’s wiry legs could have gone much faster. Part of the
time Janet left the thin path altogether and threaded her way along the
slopes, among great clumps of brilliant pink rhododendron, groves of oak
and hazel and rowan, patches of lavender-blooming heath and the mystic
white bog-cotton.

“Best not to risk meeting anyone,” she remarked with a trace of
nervousness. “I dare not be seen with you, in case....”

She left the sentence unfinished and went on in a new and brisk voice.
“Now I will be giving you your story to tell the housekeeper when you ask
for work. You are Sheena Campbell, daughter to Sorcha and Seumas, who
lived in the old shieling hut where we met on Loch Awe. When they died,