was not altogether unaccustomed to auctions, so I affected a nonchalance which I did not feel. Indeed, I was unaccountably excited. It might have been that my feelings and memories had been worked up by the seeing again the pier where first I had met Lauchlane Macleod, and the moving life which then had environed him. I felt coming over me that strange impalpable influence or tendency which had been a part of my nature in the days immediately before the drowning of the Out-islander. Even as I looked, I seemed to feel rather than see fixed upon me the baleful eyes of the man in the ghostly procession on that Lammas eve. I was recalled to myself by the voice of the auctioneer:
“The kist and its contents will be sold for a guinea and not a bawbee less.”
“I take it!” I cried impulsively. The auctioneer who in his wildest dreams had no hope of such a price seemed startled into momentary comparative silence. He quickly recovered himself and said: “The kist is yours, good master; and that concludes the roup!”
I looked around to see if there was present any one who could even suggest in any way the appearance of the man in the ghostly procession. But there was no such person. I met only mirabile dictu, the greedy eyes of Gormala MacNiel.
That evening in my room at the Kilmarnock Arms, I examined the papers as well as I could by lamplight. They were in an old-fashioned style of writing with long tails and many flourishes which made an added difficulty to me. The language was Spanish, which tongue I did not know; but by aid of French and what little Latin I could remember I made out a few words here and there. The dates ranged between 1598 and 1610. The letters, of which there were eight, were of manifest unimportance, short notes directed: “Don de Escoban” and merely arranging meetings. Then there were a number of loose pages of some printed folio, used perhaps as some kind of tally or possibly a cipher, for they were marked all over with dots. The lot was completed by a thin, narrow strip of paper covered with figures—possibly some account. Papers of three centuries ago were valuable, were it only for their style of writing. So I locked them all up carefully before I went to bed, with full intention to examine them thoroughly some day. The appearance of Gormala just at the time when I had become possessed of them seemed to connect them in some mysterious way with the former weird experiences in which she had so prominent a part.
That night I dreamed as usual, though my dreaming was of a scattered and incoherent character. Gormala’s haunting presence and all that had happened during the day, especially the buying of the chest with the mysterious papers, as well as what had taken place since my arrival at Cruden was mixed up in perpetually recurring images with the beginning of my Second Sight and the death of Lauchlane Macleod. Again, and again, and again, I saw with the eyes of memory, in fragmentary fashion, the grand form of the fisherman standing in a blaze of gold, and later fighting his way through a still sea of gold, of which the only reliefs were the scattered piles of black rock and the pale face patched with blood. Again, and again, and again, the ghostly procession came up the steep path from the depths of the sea, and passed in slow silent measure into St. Olaf’s Well.
Gormala’s words were becoming a truth to me; that above and around me was some force which was impelling to an end all things of which I could take cognizance, myself amongst the rest. Here I stopped, suddenly arrested by the thought that it was Gormala herself who had set my mind working in this direction; and the words with which she had at once warned and threatened me when after the night of Lauchlane’s death we stood at Witsennan point:
“When the Word is spoken all follows as ordained. Aye! though the Ministers of the Doom may be many and various, and though they may have to gather in one from many ages and from the furthermost ends of the earth!”
The next few days were delightfully fine, and life was one long enjoyment. On Monday evening there was a sunset which I shall never forget. The whole western sky seemed ablaze with red and gold; great masses of cloud which had rolled up seemed like huge crimson canopies looped with gold over the sun throned on the western mountains. I was standing on the Hawklaw, whence I could get a good view; beside me was a shepherd whose flock patched the steep green hillside as with snow. I turned to him and said:
“Is not that a glorious sight?”
“Aye! ’Tis grand. But like all beauty o’ the warld it fadeth into naught; an’ is only a mask for dool.”
“You do not seem to hold a very optimistic opinion of things generally.” He deliberately stoked himself from his snuff mull before replying:
“Optimist nor pessimist am I, eechie nor ochie. I’m thinkin’ the optimist and the pessimist are lears alike; takin’ a pairt for the whole, an’ so guilty o’ the logical sin o’ a particulari ad universale. Sophism they misca’ it; as if there were anything but a lee in a misstatement o’ fac’. Fac’s is good eneuch for me; an’ that, let me tell ye, is why I said that the splendour o’ the sunset is but a mask for dool. Look yon! The clouds are all gold and glory, like a regiment goin’ oot to the battle. But bide ye till the sun drops, not only below the horizon but beyond the angle o’ refraction. Then what see ye? All grim and grey, and waste, and dourness and dool; like the army as it returns frae the fecht. There be some that think that because the sun sets fine i’ the nicht, it will of necessity rise fine i’ the morn. They seem to no ken that it has to traverse one half o’ the warld ere it returns; and that the averages of fine and foul, o’ light and dark hae to be aye maintained. It may be that the days o’ fine follow ane anither fast; or that the foul times linger likewise. But in the end, the figures of fine and foul tottle up, in accord wi’ their ordered sum. What use is it, then, to no tak’ heed o’ fac’s? Weel I ken, that the fac’ o’ the morrow will differ sair frae the fac’s o’ this nicht. Not in vain hae I seen the wisdom and glory o’ the Lord in sunsets an’ dawns wi’oot learnin’ the lessons that they teach. Mon, I tell ye that it’s all those glories o’ pomp and pageantry—all the lasceevious luxuries o’ colour an’ splendour, that are the forerinners o’ disaster. Do ye no see the streaks o’ wind rinnin’ i’ the sky, frae the east to the west? Do ye ken what they portend? I’m tellin’ ye, that before the sun sets the morrow nicht there will be ruin and disaster on all this side o’ Scotland. The storm will no begin here. It is perhaps ragin’ the noo away to the east. But it will come quick, most likely wi’ the risin’ o’ the tide; and woe be then to them as has no made safe wi’ all they can. Hark ye the stillness!” Shepherd-like he took no account of his own sheep whose ceaseless bleating, sounding in every note of the scale, broke the otherwise universal silence of nature. “I’m thinkin’ it’s but the calm before the storm. Weel sir, I maun gang. The yowes say it is time for the hame comin’. An’ mark ye, the collie! He looks at me reproachful, as though I had forgot the yowes! My sairvice to ye, sir!”
“Good night” I answered, “I hope I shall meet you again.”
“I’m thinkin’ the same masel’. I hae much enjoyed yer pleasin’ converse. I hope it’s mony a crack we yet may hae thegither!” And so my philosophical egoist moved homewards, blissfully unconscious of the fact that my sole contribution to the “pleasing converse” was the remark that he did not seem optimistic.
The whole mass of his charge moved homewards at an even footpace, the collie making frantic dashes here and there to keep his flock headed in the right direction. Presently I saw the herd pouring like a foam-white noisy river across the narrow bridge over the Water of Cruden.
The next morning was fine, very hot, and of an unusual stillness. Ordinarily I should have rejoiced at such a day; but the warning of the erudite and philosophical shepherd made me mistrust. To me the worst of the prophecy business was that it became a disturbing influence. To-day, perforce, because it was fine, I had to expect that it would end badly. About noon I walked over to Whinnyfold; it being Saturday I knew that the workmen would have gone away early, and I wanted to have the house to myself so that I could go over it quietly and finally arrange
