Murdo drew back with a clumsy start from the dead man's side and looked down on his face, then at the boy's, queerly. "I am for off," said he at last with a sudden hurry. "You can follow if you like, red young one." And he tossed the dead man's buttons in Rory's face!
ONCE I saw a fairy King, and it was in the Castle up-by. The Castle took fire, and a fine blaze it made at the foot of Dunchaach. A boy, I ran with the rest to carry out the MacCailein's rich gear, and behold! I wandered and lost my way in that large place where is a window for every day in the year. Up the long stairs and through the far passages, and over the shining sounding floors went I, barefoot, with a feared eye on every hole and corner. At every door it was, "Surely now I'm with the folks at the fire"; but every door was a way into a quieter quietness, and the Castle was my own. I sat at last on a black chair that had a curious twisted back, and the tears went raining on the lap of my kilt.
Long, long I sat, and sore I grat, my mind full, not so much of my way lost, but of the bigness of things, and the notion of what it would be to have to live in a castle at night, with doors on every hand for ghosts to rap at, and crooked passages without end for gowsty winds to moan in. Thinks I, "The smallest hut in the town for me, with all plain before me, with the one door shut and my face to it, and the candlelight seeking into every crack and cranny!"
It was then that the fairy King came on me out of the sewed cloth hanging on the wall.
He was a dainty wee man, in our own tartan, with a steel plate on his breast baronly-style, and strange long curly hair. I ran my wet eyes down seven silver buttons the shape of salmon on the front of his vest before I let myself go, but go I must, so I put fast heels on my fright. I galloped with a frozen tongue through miles of the Duke's castle till a door brought me out on the grass of Cairnban, in front of the friendly bleeze that my own folks were pouring the stoups of water on.
That was the only time the quiet folk and I came to a meeting, though our family was always gleg at seeing things. A cousin-german once saw the fairy bull that puts up in Loch Steallaire-bhan behind the town. It came on a jaunt to the glen in the guise of a rich maiden, and my cousin, the son of the house, made love to her. One night--in a way that I need not mention--he found himself in her room combing down her yellow hair, and what was among her hair but fine sand that told the whole story? "You are a _gruagach_ of the lake!" cried the lad, letting the comb drop on the floor, with his face white, and the thing tarned to its own shape and went bellowing to the shore.