A man brought a torch and lit the brushwood on the altar.  Instantly a flame rose to heaven, through which the figure of the magician showed fitfully like a mountain in mist.  That act broke the wizardry for me.  To sacrifice a cat was monstrous and horrible, but it was also uncouthly silly.  I saw the magic for what it was, a maniac’s trickery.  In the revulsion I grew angry, and my anger heartened me wonderfully.  Was this stupendous quackery to bring ruin to the Tidewater?  Though I had to choke the life with my own hands out of that warlock’s throat, I should prevent it.

Then from behind the fire the voice began again.  But this time I understood it.  The words were English.  I was amazed, for I had forgotten that I knew the wizard to be a white man.

“Thus saith the Lord God,” it cried, “Woe to the bloody city!  I will make the pile great for fire.  Heap on wood, kindle the fire, consume the flesh, and spice it well, and let the bones be burned.”

He poked the beast on the altar, and a bit of burning yellow fur fell off and frizzled on the ground.

It was horrid beyond words, lewd and savage and impious, and desperately cruel.  And the strange thing was that the voice was familiar.

“O thou that dwellest upon many waters,” it went on again, “abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness.  The Lord of Hosts hath sworn by Himself, saying, Surely I will fill thee with men as with caterpillars....”

With that last word there came over me a flood of recollection.  It was spoken not in the common English way, but in the broad manner of my own folk....  I saw in my mind’s eye a wet moorland, and heard a voice inveighing against the wickedness of those in high places....  I smelled the foul air of the Canongate Tolbooth, and heard this same man testifying against the vanity of the world.... “Cawterpillars!” It was the voice that had once bidden me sing “Jenny Nettles.”

Harsh and strident and horrible, it was yet the voice I had known, now blaspheming Scripture words behind that gruesome sacrifice.  I think I laughed aloud.  I remembered the man I had pursued my first night in Virginia, the man who had raided Frew’s cabin.  I remembered Ringan’s tale of the Scots redemptioner that had escaped from Norfolk county, and the various strange writings which had descended from the hills.  Was it not the queerest fate that one whom I had met in my boyish scrapes should return after six years and many thousand miles to play once more a major part in my life!  The nameless general in the hills was Muckle John Gib, once a mariner of Borrowstoneness, and some time leader of the Sweet-Singers.  I felt the smell of wet heather, and the fishy odours of the Forth; I heard the tang of our country speech, and the swirl of the gusty winds of home.