"Wait! please wait," shouted Rick; "the animals went in two by two, remember!"
It was of no avail; so he caught up his rod and ran after her, leaving the idol to fulfil Miss Willina's rôle of sphinx.
It had been dark some hours before she dropped her knitting with a purposely dramatic start.
"Oh, Rick! didn't I say I had a presentiment? Now I've gone and left that wicked idol on the _harp_--on the Alt na heac _harp_ of all places in the world, and you a descendant of the Vikings!"
Rick, at work on an infant Samuel for his aunt's room, looked up cheerfully.
"What? why, everything. Don't you know the legend? Everything left on that _harp_ disappears. The dead take it as a tribute, and if they don't like it, they send it back to work evil to the living for a month and a day."
Mr. John Macdonald was a silent man, but when he did speak, his meaning was clear. "Where the devil you get all that rubbish passes me. I've lived longer in this island than you, I've seen more of the people than you, yet I never heard such trash."
He dived back into his book as suddenly as he had emerged from it, and there was a dead silence.
"Never mind, auntie," whispered Rick sympathetically; for these outbreaks were almost the only things which upset Miss Willina's majesty. "I'll go first thing and bring Numbo Jumbo back to be burnt."
"Pray do not trouble," she replied with an audible sniff. "If I am foolish, I am foolish. If it is rubbish, I suppose it is rubbish. Only if anything happens, perhaps you will be considerate enough to admit that I foretold it."
Her hurt dignity, however, vanished before Rick Halmar's face, when he came in to breakfast next morning minus the idol.
"Gone! Oh, Rick! you don't mean it isn't there?" she cried, in not displeased excitement. "John! _do_ you hear? It's gone, and you said it was rubbish. What do you say now?" Mr. Macdonald affected not to hear.
"Yes, it's gone," said Rick. "Numbo Jumbo's on the loose. I expect, really, that some of the crofter's children have taken it for a doll."
"It is all very well for your uncle to scoff, Eric, but the young should have more reverence for the wisdom of their elders," retorted his aunt severely.
"But Aunt Will!--you don't really believe--"