above the Gentiles, and Dagon and Baal will be cast down. Are ye still
in the courts of bondage, young man, or seek ye the true light which
the Holy One of Israel has vouchsafed to me, John Gib, his unworthy
prophet?"

Now I knew into what rabble I had strayed. It was the company who
called themselves the Sweet-Singers, led by one Muckle John Gib, once a
mariner of Borrowstoneness-on-Forth. He had long been a thorn in the
side of the preachers, holding certain strange heresies that
discomforted even the wildest of the hill-folk. They had clapped him
into prison; but the man, being three parts mad had been let go, and
ever since had been making strife in the westland parts of Clydesdale.
I had heard much of him, and never any good. It was his way to draw
after him a throng of demented women, so that the poor, draggle-tailed
creatures forgot husband and bairns and followed him among the mosses.
There were deeds of violence and blood to his name, and the look of him
was enough to spoil a man's sleep. He was about six and a half feet
high, with a long, lean head and staring cheek bones. His brows grew
like bushes, and beneath glowed his evil and sunken eyes. I remember
that he had monstrous long arms, which hung almost to his knees, and a
great hairy breast which showed through a rent in his seaman's jerkin.
In that strange place, with the dripping spell of night about me, and
the fire casting weird lights and shadows, he seemed like some devil of
the hills awakened by magic from his ancient grave.

But I saw it was time for me to be speaking up.

"I am neither gangrel, nor spy, nor Amalekite, nor yet am I Zebedee
Linklater. My name is Andrew Garvald, and I have to-day left my home to
make my way to Edinburgh College. I tried a short road in the mist, and