And the trouble is Sandy’s
trouble. Rather a long story. But there’s a long mile in front of us
yet, if you care to be told.”

During that mile I heard. Sandy had been engaged a year ago to a girl of
Gavon who was in service at Inverness. In March last he had gone,
without giving notice, to see her, and as he walked up the street in
which her mistress’ house stood, had met her suddenly face to face, in
company with a man whose clipped speech betrayed him English, whose
manner a kind of gentleman. He had a flourish of his hat for Sandy,
pleasure to see him, and scarcely any need of explanation as to how he
came to be walking with Catrine. It was the most natural thing possible,
for a city like Inverness boasted its innocent urbanities, and a girl
could stroll with a man. And for the time, since also Catrine was so
frankly pleased to see him, Sandy was satisfied. But after his return to
Gavon, suspicion, fungus-like, grew rank in his mind, with the result
that a month ago he had, with infinite pains and blottings, written a
letter to Catrine, urging her return and immediate marriage. Thereafter
it was known that she had left Inverness; it was known that she had
arrived by train at Brora. From Brora she had started to walk across the
moor by the path leading just above the Picts’ Castle, crossing the
rapids to Gavon, leaving her box to be sent by the carrier. But at Gavon
she had never arrived. Also it was said that, though it was a hot
afternoon, she wore a big cloak. By this time we had come to the lodge, the lights of which showed dim
and blurred through the thick hill-mists that had streamed sullenly down
from the higher ground. “And the rest,” said Hugh, “which is as fantastic as this is sober fact,
I will tell you later.”

Now, a fruit-bearing determination to go to bed is, to my mind, as
difficult to ripen as a fruit-bearing determination to get up, and in
spite of our long day, I was glad when Hugh (the rest of the men having
yawned themselves out of the smoking-room) came back from the hospitable
dispensing of bedroom candlesticks with a briskness that denoted that,
as far as he was concerned, the distressing determination was not
imminent. “As regards Sandy,” I suggested. “Ah, I also was thinking of that,” he said. “Well, Catrine Gordon left
Brora, and never arrived here. That is fact. Now for what remains. Have
you any remembrance of a woman always alone walking about the moor by
the loch? I think I once called your attention to her.”

“Yes, I remember,” I said. “Not Catrine, surely; a very old woman, awful
to look at. Moustache, whiskers, and muttering to herself. Always
looking at the ground, too.”

“Yes, that is she--not Catrine. Catrine! My word, a May morning! But the
other--it is Mrs Macpherson, reputed witch. Well, Sandy trudges there, a
mile and more away, every night to see her. You know Sandy: Adonis of
the north. Now, can you account by any natural explanation for that
fact? That he goes off after a long day to see an old hag in the hills?”

“It would seem unlikely,” said I. “Unlikely! Well, yes, unlikely.”

Hugh got up from his chair and crossed the room to where a bookcase of
rather fusty-looking volumes stood between windows. He took a small
morocco-backed book from a top shelf. “Superstitions of Sutherlandshire,” he said, as he handed it to me. “Turn to page 128, and read.”

I obeyed, and read. “September 15 appears to have been the date of what we may call this
devil festival. On the night of that day the powers of darkness held
pre-eminent dominion, and over-rode for any who were abroad that night
and invoked their aid, the protective Providence of Almighty God. Witches, therefore, above all, were peculiarly potent. On this night any
witch could entice to herself the heart and the love of any young man
who consulted her on matters of philtre or love charm, with the result
that on any night in succeeding years of the same date, he, though he
was lawfully affianced and wedded, would for that night be hers. If,
however, he should call on the name of God through any sudden grace of
the Spirit, her charm would be of no avail. On this night, too, all
witches had the power by certain dreadful incantations and indescribable
profanities, to raise from the dead those who had committed suicide.”

“Top of the next page,” said Hugh. “Leave out this next paragraph; it
does not bear on this last.”

“Near a small village in this country,” I read, “called Gavon, the moon
at midnight is said to shine through a certain gap or fissure in a wall
of rock close beside the river on to the ruins of a Pict castle, so
that the light of its beams falls on to a large flat stone erected there
near the gate, and supposed by some to be an ancient and pagan altar. At
that moment, so the superstition still lingers in the country side, the
evil and malignant spirits which hold sway on Gavon’s Eve, are at the
zenith of their powers, and those who invoke their aid at this moment
and in this place, will, though with infinite peril to their immortal
souls, get all that they desire of them.”

The paragraph on the subject ended here, and I shut the book. “Well?” I asked. “Under favourable circumstances two and two make four,” said Hugh. “And four means----”

“This. Sandy is certainly in consultation with a woman who is supposed
to be a witch, whose path no crofter will cross after nightfall. He
wants to learn, at whatever cost, poor devil, what happened to Catrine. Thus I think it more than possible that to-morrow, at midnight, there
will be folk by the Picts’ pool. There is another curious thing. I was
fishing there yesterday, and just opposite the river gate of the castle,
someone has set up a great flat stone, which has been dragged (for I
noticed the crushed grass) from the débris at the bottom of the slope.”

“You mean that the old hag is going to try to raise the body of Catrine,
if she is dead?”

“Yes, and I mean to see myself what happens. Come too.”

The next day Hugh and I fished down the river from the lodge, taking
with us not Sandy, but another gillie, and ate our lunch on the slope of
the Picts’ Castle after landing a couple of fish there. Even as Hugh had
said, a great flat slab of stone had been dragged on to the platform
outside the river gate of the castle, where it rested on certain rude
supports, which, now that it was in place, seemed certainly designed to
receive it. It was also exactly opposite that lancet window in the
basaltic rock across the pool, so that if the moon at midnight did shine
through it, the light would fall on the stone. This then was the almost
certain scene of the incantations. Below the platform, as I have said, the ground fell rapidly away to the
level of the pool, which owing to rain on the hills was running very
high, and, streaked with lines of greyish bubbles, poured down in
amazing and ear-filling volume.