And the owls were more busy than pleasant that night in the deep woods of Balgay Hill.  It was a sign that the moon was not kindly to their heavy eyes.  The scene, as Aminadab issued from the postern, might have been felt as beautiful, from the very awe which it inspired.  But Aminadab was no lover of Nature, especially if he saw in her recesses any hiding-places for such beings as Brahma, more mysterious to him from knowing nothing at all about him, except that he was some Ashtoreth, or Chemosh, or Milcom, in a new form, let loose from hell, to disturb the pure souls of Seceders destined for heaven.  The full moon fell on the hollow in the hills, surmounted by the dark woods of Balgay right aface of him, the house of Logie behind, and the declinations on either side, in one of which lay the little Golgotha.  There, in the midst of the hollow, stood, grim and desolate, the dark brick-built Cradle, casting its shadow to the south; the four-corner prominences shooting out like horns, and so unlike the habitation of a human being, yea, unlike any composition of brick and lime ever reared by the hand of a genius for house-making.  The shadow lay on the grass like those ghastly sun-pictures so called, yet more like moon-born things; and then the solemn silence, only relieved to be deepened by the occasional to-hoo! was oppressive to him, as if a medium for some footsteps to startle him into superstition.  Yet he was drawn towards the horrid dungeon in spite of his very self.  Janet’s story would come at last, he thought, to a termination which would justify his own suspicions.  And even there before him was evidence in the same direction; for having thrown himself, as if by an effort, into the shade of the dungeon, he could see beyond its verge, and by, as it were, looking round the corner, the body of the dark-faced Aditi.  She had, no doubt, come stealthily from the house, and was postured in an attitude far deeper in humiliation and adjuration than we practise in our land.  Her face was covered by her hands; for, in truth, she could see nothing through these mere light-permitting slips of a brick’s width, wherewith this horrible hole was supplied, as if by a relaxation of severity in its last stage of perfect inhumanity.  No, nothing could be seen, but something might be heard; yea, the most piteous moans that ever burst from an oppressed heart, and yet so soft, so uncomplaining, as if the sufferer found no fault with aught in the world but herself.  Then Aditi’s sounds were something like responses, rising as the internal sounds rose, and as they died away—­a jabbering wail of an Eastern tongue.  Aminadab, blunt though he was, and fonder of pork than poetry, and of scriptural quotations—­which he had always at his tongue’s end for conclaves of weavers—­than impassioned sentiments, rising at the inspiring touch of this strange world’s endless and ever-occurring occasions, was impressed.  He looked over the dark abode, up at the moon, then at the prostrate Ady, and thought of the distance