The two others stole off into corners of the darkling hut with their
lovers, but this prudent lad never took his lips off the Jew's-harp.

"Harping is good if no ill follows it," said the semblance of his
sweetheart; but he never answered. He played and thrummed, and out of
one dark corner trickled red blood into the fire-light, and out of
another corner came a current of blood to meet it. Then he slowly rose,
still harping, and backed his way to the door, and fled into the hills
from these cruel airy shapes of false desire.

"And do the people actually believe all that?"

"Ay, do they!"

That is the boatman's version of Scott's theme in "Glenfinlas." Witches
played a great part in his narratives.

In the boatman's country there is a plain, and on the plain is a knoll,
about twice the height of a one-storeyed cottage, and pointed "like a
sugar-loaf." The old people remember, or have heard, that this mound was
not there when they were young. It swelled up suddenly out of the grave
of a witch who was buried there.

The witch was a great enemy of a shepherd. Every morning she would put
on the shape of a hare, and run before his dogs, and lead them away from
the sheep. He knew it was right to shoot at her with a crooked sixpence,
and he hit her on the hind leg, and the dogs were after her, and chased
the hare into the old woman's cottage. The shepherd ran after them, and
there he found them, tearing at the old woman; but the hare was twisted
round their necks, and she was crying, "Tighten, hare, tighten!" and it