At the fourth house in the village he was made to throw the fairy arrow. There is an old saying about shutting the north, south and west windows because evil never came from the east, and the west window was left open that night. The arrow came through the window and struck a handsome, strong, healthy woman called M'Lean, who sat singing at her work. Her hand fell powerless by her side, and, Campbell goes on, before morning she was dead.
The story belongs to the Highland tradition of elf-arrows, which were thought to kill cattle and people. The Uist man is a human accomplice forced by the fairies. Neil afterwards told that he was the one they had compelled to do the mischief, and Campbell adds that, by popular belief, the woman was taken away by the fairies and might still be among them, only her semblance being buried.
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