On the way back to
Edinburgh, travelling with some colleagues, it chanced that a heavy
storm caught them, and necessity drove them to take shelter for the
night in a farmhouse near to an old peel tower which stood on the verge
of the wild moorland country beyond Moffat.
That night Lord Durie, in his stuffy box-bed, dreamed a terrible dream.
He was once more in the power of the wizard or warlock; and it seemed to
him that in his dream he even heard again those mysterious words that
had once so haunted him. With a start he woke, bathed in perspiration,
to find that day had broken, and that from the hillside echoed the
long-drawn cry: "Far yaud! Far yaud! _Bauty!_" While, ben the house, he
could hear a slow, shuffling step, and a thin old voice quavering: "Hey,
Maudge!" to a mewing cat.
"What was yon cry oot on the hill? Oh, jist oor Ailick cryin' on his
dowg, Bauty, to weer the sheep," said the grey-haired, brown-faced old
woman to whom they had owed their shelter for the night.
"Veesitors?" she continued, in reply to further questions. "Na. We hae
nae veesitors here. There was aince a puir sick man lay twa three months
i' the auld tower yont by, a year or twa back, but there's been nae
veesitors. They said he was daft, an' I was kind o' feared whiles to gie
him his meat.
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