The Mystery of the Sea

n in imagination, or their distracted mien in reality. Mingled with them was the great-eyed, aquiline-featured, gaunt old woman who had taken such an interest in the affair, and in my part

hing to sell and she buys nothing. She's not a tripper, and she's not a beggar, and she's not a thief, and she's not a worker of any sort. She's a queer-looking l

drew their nets at the ebbing tide. I was walking towards Whinnyfold when she came upon me silently from behind. She must have been hidden among the bent-grass of the sandhills for had she been anywhere in view I mu

me what ye saw yesterday?

seemed so ridiculous." Her stern featu

lt that this was a little too much and was about to make a sharp answer, when suddenly it stru

was some mystery here which I could not fathom. She seemed to read my mind like an op

that can speak? Is it that one with the Gift o' Second Sight has no an understandin' o' it

"that you could tell what I saw

the Doom! It's no that varied that there need be any mistake. After all Death

Sight why did you not see the vis

s! Learn ye then that the Voice speaks only as it listeth into chosen ears, and the Vis

the chosen is given to know, how comes it that you, who seem not to have been chosen on

n' the knowledge and the experience to guide them aright. How, think ye, is it that some can see much, an

tell me how much you sa

candle an' the dead-hole, not to know when they are seen tae ither een. Na, na! laddie, what I kent o' yer seein' was no by the Gift but only by the use o'

vely "Second Sight is alto

ung sir; when the Voice has spoken there is no mor

e Doom-whatever it is-is not a true forerunner. What I meant was that it seems to be a matter of chance in whose ear the Voice-

such goes forth. When the Voice speaks, it is mainly followed by tears an' woe an' lamentation! Nae! nor is it only one bit manifestation that stands by its lanes, remote and isolate from all

purpose which has to be wrought out by means of many kinds; and that whoso see

their wark, no to need the help or the thocht of any human

that, Christian though she might be-and in the West they are generally devout observants of the duties of their creed-her belief in this respect came f

t mind, of some case you have k

spot where later a boat was to gang doon, I hae heard on a lone moor the hammerin' o' the coffin-wright when one passed me who was soon to dee. I hae seen the death-sark fold round the speerit o' a drowned one, in

strange sights and that yet nothing came of them? I gather that you do not always know to whom something is going

' the sea; how mony lie oot on the hillsides, or are fallen in deep places where their bones whiten unkent. Nay! more, to how many has Death come in a way that men

apse before the w

n follow hard upon the Doom; but there be times, nay mostly are

whom the Doom is spoken." She answered with an air of cert

rra een lie prone on rocks, wi' the water rinnin' down from his hair. An' again I heard the minute bells as he went by me on a road where i

be tested; so I asked her at once, though to do

he death happened it would prove beyond all doubt the existence of such a thing as

thereby is no for traffickin' wi' them that only cares for curiosity and publeecity. The Voice and the Vision o' the S

you at any rate." She accepted my apology with a sort of regal inclination

is no for the like o' me to cumber the road o' their doin'. Know ye then, and remember weel, how it was told ye by Gormala MacNiel that Lauch

some thought had struck her,

ower him that I kent not in the nicht wha it was, though the

ot listen to my calling after her; but with long stride