and going whither I was taken, but the disclosure of the sun-ray was
a key to individuality, and seemed to unlock my prison doors. I
began to think for myself, and to find my own character as a
creature apart from others. My second experience was years after,--
just when I left school and when my father took me to see the place
where I was born, in the north of Scotland. Oh, it is such a wild
corner of the world! Beautiful craggy hills and dark, deep lakes--
rough moorlands purple with heather and such wonderful skies at
sunset! The cottage where my father had lived as a boy when he
herded sheep is still there--I have bought it for myself now,--it is
a little stone hut of three rooms,--and another one about a mile off
where he took my mother to live, and where I came into the world!--I
have bought that too. Yes--I felt a great thrill of happiness when I
stood there knee-deep among the heather, my father clasping my hand,
and looking, with me, on those early scenes of his boyhood when he
had scarcely a penny to call his own! Yet HE was sad!--very sad! and
told me then that he would give all his riches to feel as light of
heart and free from care as he did in those old days! And then--then
we went to see old Alison--" Here she broke off,--a strange light
came into her eyes and she smiled a little. "I think I had better
not tell you about old Alison!" she said.

"Why not?" and Don Aloysius returned her smile. "If old Alison has
anything to do with your happiness I should like to hear."

"Well, you see, you are a priest," went on Morgana, slowly, "and she
is a witch. Oh yes, truly!--a real witch! There is no one in all
that part of the Highlands that does not know of her, and the power
she has! She is very, very old--some folks say she is more than a
hundred. She knew my father and grandfather--she came to my father's