Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

THE CHKST.
tliey had no business with them ; and that he had not
(lone any harm to them." She went out one night hy
herself, and she stole with her the key of the barn
door ; she lay hid in a hole till the wild man and the
beasts went in ; she took with her the gillies, and they
caught the mid man. They brought him in and they
took off his beard ; when the beard came off him she
knew him, but she took no notice ; and he did not
know her. On the morrow he was about to go, but
she spoke to her master to keep him ; that the work
was too heavy on her, and that she needed help. Her
master ordered her to keep him. She kept him with
her, and he liimself and she were cleaning the stable.
A short time after this she spoke to her master for
leave to go home on a trip to see her friend's. Her
master gave her leave. She said she would like well
to have her gillie with her, and the two best horses
that were in the stable.
When they went, she was questioning him by the
way what had made him go with these beasts ; or
what he was at before the day. He would not tell
her anything. They went on forward till they came
to the hostelry where he had got the half hundred
pounds. When she set her face down to the house,
he refused to go into it. She said to him,- " Did he
do anything wrong, as he was refusing to go into it."
He said, " That he had got half a hundred pounds
from the man of the house." She said to him, " Had.
he paid them ;" and he said, " That he had not paid,
and that a strip of skin was to come from the top of
his head to the sole of his foot, if it was not paid at
the end of a day and a year." She said, " It would
be well deserved ; but that she was going to stay the
night in the hostelry, and that, she must go down."
She asked him to put the horses into the stable, and