‘There’s a fine girl for you,’ he said to himself repeatedly, with boyish enthusiasm.  He thought, too, how nobly her life would be spent if she chose to be the helpmeet of a Christian minister.  He wondered whether Mary could take her sister’s place in the home circle.  Yet with all this he made no decision as to his own course.  He was discreet, and in minds like his decisions upon important matters are fruits of slow growth.

He came at last to a farm, a very goodly farm for so hilly a district.  It lay, a fertile flat, in a notch of the green hillside.  When he reached the house yard he asked for Mistress Betty M’Leod, and was led to her presence.  The old dame sat at her spinning-wheel in a farm kitchen.  Her white hair was drawn closely, like a thin veil, down the sides of her head and pinned at the back.  Her features were small, her eyes bright; she was not unlike a squirrel in her sharp little movements and quick glances.  She wore a small shawl pinned around her spare shoulders.  Her skirts fell upon the treadle of the spinning-wheel.  The kitchen in which she sat was unused; there was no fire in the stove.  The brick floor, the utensils hanging on the walls, had the appearance of undisturbed rest.  Doors and windows were open to the view of the green slopes and the golden sea beneath them.

‘You come from Canada,’ said the old dame.  She left her spinning with a certain interested formality of manner.

‘From Montreal,’ said he.

‘That’s the same.  Canada is a terrible way off.’

‘And now,’ he said, ‘I hear there are witches in this part of the land.’  Whereupon he smiled in an incredulous cultured way.

She nodded her head as if she had gauged his thought.  ’Ay, there’s many a minister believes in them if they don’t let on they do.  I mind——­’

‘Yes,’ said he.

’I mind how my sister went out early one morning, and saw a witch milking one of our cows.’

‘How did you know she was a witch?’

’Och, she was a neighbour we knew to be a witch real well.  My sister didn’t anger her.  It’s terrible unlucky to vex them.  But would you believe it? as long as we had that cow her cream gave no butter.  We had to sell her and get another.  And one time—­it was years ago, when Donald and me was young—­the first sacrament came round——­’

‘Yes,’ said he, looking sober.

’And all the milk of our cows would give hardly any butter for a whole year!  And at house-cleaning time, there, above the milk shelves, what did they find but a bit of hair rope!  Cows’ and horses’ hair it was.  Oh, it was terrible knotted, and knotted just like anything!  So then of course we knew.’

‘Knew what?’

’Why, that the milk was bewitched.  We took the rope away.  Well, that very day more butter came at the churning, and from that time on, more, but still not so much as ought by rights to have come.  Then, one day, I thought to unknot the rope, and I undid, and undid, and undid.  Well, when I had got it undone, that day the butter came as it should!’