28 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. {emar. 111. 
in the broken ground near the water. Our next cast took us up 
a slope of hill, where we found a wild covey of grouse. Right 
and left at them the moment they rose, and killed a brace; the 
rest went over the hill. Another covey on the same ground 
gave me three shots. From the top of the hill we saw a dreary 
expanse of flat ground, with Loch A-na-caillach in the centre 
of it, a bleak cold-looking piece of water, with several small 
grey pools near it. Donald told me a long story of the origin 
of its name, pointing out a large cairn of stones at one end of it. 
The story was, that some few years ago—‘ Not so long either, 
Sir (said Donald); for Rory Beg, the auld smuggler, that died 
last year, has often told me, that-he minded the whole thing 
weel”—there lived down below the woods an old woman, by habit 
and repute a witch, and one possessed of more than mortal power, 
which she used in a most malicious manner, spreading sickness 
and death among man and beast. The minister of the place, who 
came, however, but once a month to do duty in a building called 
a chapel, was the only person who, by dint of prayer and Bible, 
could annoy or resist her. He at last made her so uncomfortable 
by attacking her with holy water and other spiritual weapons, 
that she suddenly left the place, and no one knew where she 
went to. It soon became evident, however, that her abode was 
not far off, as cattle and people were still taken ill in the same 
unaccountable manner as before. At last, an idle fellow, who 
was out poaching deer near Loch A-na-caillach late one evening, 
saw her start through the air from the cairn of stones towards 
the inhabited part of the country. This put people on the look- 
out, and she was constantly seen passing to and fro on her unholy 
errands during the fine moonlight nights. Many a time was she 
shot at as she flew past, but without success. At last a pot- 
valiant and unbelieving old fellow, who had long been a serjeant 
in some Highland regiment, determined to free his neighbours 
from the witch ; and having loaded his gun with a double charge 
of gunpowder, put in, instead of shot, a crooked sixpence and 
some silver buttons, which he had made booty of somewhere or 
other in war time. He then, in the most foolhardy manner, laid 
himself down on the hill, just where we were then standing when 
Donald told me the story, and, by the light of the moon, watched 
the witch leave her habitation in the cairn of stones. As soon as 
