up all night, and saw the huge head of the beast looking in now at one
window, now at another, all night long. As soon as the sun was up,
they set to work again, and finished the two rows of stones all the
way from the pot to the top of the little hill on which the cottage
stood. Then they tied a cross of rowan-tree twigs on every stone, so
that once the beast was in the avenue of stones he could only get out
at the end. And this was Nelly's part of the job. Next they gathered a
quantity of furze and brushwood and peat, and piled it in the end of
the avenue next the cottage. Then Angus went and killed a little pig,
and dressed it ready for cooking.

"'Now you go down to my brother Hamish,' he said to Mr. MacLeod; 'he's
a carpenter, you know,--and ask him to lend you his longest wimble.'"

"What's a wimble?" asked little Allister.

[Illustration]

"A wimble is a long tool, like a great gimlet, with a cross handle,
with which you turn it like a screw. And Allister ran and fetched it,
and got back only half an hour before the sun went down. Then they put
Nelly into the cottage, and shut the door. But I ought to have told
you that they had built up a great heap of stones behind the
brushwood, and now they lighted the brushwood, and put down the pig to
roast by the fire, and laid the wimble in the fire halfway up to the
handle. Then they laid themselves down behind the heap of stones and
waited.

"By the time the sun was out of sight, the smell of the roasting pig
had got down the avenue to the side of the pot, just where the kelpie