Twelve Great Black Cats by Sorche Nic Leodhas Read Free Book Online Page A

dying off, and those few members of it who were still alive had wandered far and wide. But no matter how far from home a clansman got, the minute he died his ghost would hotfoot it back to the castle, to take his place there with the rest. Although of late they were coming along fewer and fewer, still one or two would show up every now and then. As time went by, maybe the castle was getting a wee bit crowded, but none of the ghosts minded that. If anything, they liked it that way, because, being so numerous, they could kick up a fine old row when any curious mortal came poking about the castle. All the folk for miles around were so scared of the ghosts that not a body among them would come within sight of the place.
    So there the clan were, having their pleasant little feuds and friendships, quarreling bitterly and making up joyfully, with never a dull day to fret them, as happy a crowd of Scottish ghosts as ever you’d hope to see.
    Their troubles began when the castle was sold to a man who came from somewhere down below the border. A master builder he was, or so folk said, who made his living building grand houses for Englishmen who had the money to pay for such things. It wasn’t that he wanted to live in the castle, Heaven save the day! But having an eye for business, he saw that the leaden roof and the fine old woodwork and stone would make the sort of building materials that he could use in his trade.
    The builder moved in upon his castle with a crew of his own workmen, Sassenachs to the last man, and without the least warning they all pitched in and began to tear the castle down.
    The ghosts were terribly annoyed when the roof was suddenly snatched away from over their heads. But after it was gone, they found the floor of the attic would do very well for a roof, so the damage was not too bad. It wasn’t until the walls of the castle began to come tumbling down about their ears that the ghosts were at their wits’ end. The top story was gone, and the wreckers were starting to pry out the great gray stones from the walls of the next one, and it was plain to see that very shortly there would be naught left of the castle but the bare cellar holes and the empty moat.
    The ghosts were fair distracted. They had not been standing about and doing nothing while all this destruction was going on. The minute the strangers appeared at the castle, they had mustered their forces and prepared to drive them away. But the worst of their tricks were no good at all. The poor ghosts raised a terrible racket, but the rumble of falling stones, the screech of splitting wood, and the thunder of crashing beams was louder yet, and easily drowned out the loudest noises all of them together could make.
    They gibbered and mowed and made terrible faces, swooping down upon the workmen, thinking to frighten them away. If the men had been Scottish workers, the sight of a sluagh of ghosts coming at them might have put them to flight. But these workmen were not Scots. They were all Englishmen that the master builder had brought with him when he came up from England, and they were all much too practical and hardheaded to believe in ghosts. They did not shriek and take to their heels when the ghosts came at them. They just looked right through them and paid them no heed at all, except for remarking to one another that the plaster dust was awful thick in the air at times. A man could scarcely see through the clouds of it, they said. All the while, the castle walls were getting lower, day by day. At last, one evening, after the workmen had laid off for the day and had gone to their quarters in the nearby village, the old ghost who was chief of the clan gathered the ghosts together.
    â€œThere’s naught that we can do here, lads,” he told them sadly. “We must just be flitting away.”
    â€œOch, aye,” the others agreed. “We must be flitting away. But where?”
    Where? That was the important question. Where would