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Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea

by Gordon Stables · English · Gutenberg #38199 · 330,556 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Kenneth McAlpine: A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea

Author: Gordon Stables


        
Release date: December 3, 2011 [eBook #38199]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38199

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KENNETH MCALPINE: A TALE OF MOUNTAIN, MOORLAND AND SEA ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Kenneth McAlpine
A Tale of Mountain, Moorland and Sea
By Gordon Stables
Published by S.W. Partridge & Co;.
This edition dated 1885.

Kenneth McAlpine, by Gordon Stables.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
KENNETH MCALPINE, BY GORDON STABLES.

CHAPTER ONE.

EARLY DAYS.

  "Away, ye gay landscapes, ye garden of roses,
  And bring me the land where the dewdrop reposes."

  Byron.

  "Poor woolly mother, be at peace!
  Whither thou goest I will bear thy care."

  M. Arnold.

Scene: A Highland mountain, clad almost to the summit in purple heather.
On the right a ravine, half hidden by drooping birch trees.  On the
left a pine forest.  Sheep grazing in the foreground.  Smoke upcurling
from a humble cottage in the distance.  A shepherd-boy talking to his
dog; between them a lamb is lying on the ground.

"It is dead, Kooran, dead, dead, dead.  It is as dead as ever a lamb
was, Kooran.  Ay, my doggie, I ken you're sorrowful and anxious, but you
may stand there and lick its little face and legs, till this time the
morn, Kooran, but you can never bring back life to it again.

"What do you say, Kooran?  Its eyes are still bright and shinin' and
life-like?  True; but wait a wee, Kooran.  Yes, wait a wee, dear frien'.
In less than an hour, Kooran, its poor eyes will be glassy enough, and
its bits o' legs as cold and stiff as the crook I'm holding in my hand.

"Let us hide it awa' in under this bush o' whins,--out o' sight of the
poor woeful mother of it.  I canna bear to bury it just yet, while the
heart is still warm, but by-and-bye, Kooran; by-and-bye, doggie.

"Yonder comes the mother, Kooran.  She has left the flock again."

The sheep bleats.

"Listen, Kooran, listen.  What a mournfu' bleat!  It makes my blood
creep.  And look at her eyes, Kooran.  They seem starting out o' the
sockets wi' excitement.  Drive her back, Kooran, but _walk_, doggie;
dinna run.  Drive her ever so gently.  She'll never have her lammie to
trot at her heels again.  Gently, Kooran, gently.

"And now, Kooran, off you trot home for the barley scones and the flagon
o' milk.  I'll have the lammie buried before you come back, so the sight
of that will trouble you no more.  Then we'll have dinner, doggie, and
it is time, too.  Look at the sun where it is, right over the highest
peak of Ben Varra.  Off you trot, Kooran, and dinna let the grass grow
under your feet till you're back again.

"Heigho! another lammie dead!"  The boy was alone now; the faithful dog
had departed at once on his mission.  In a bee-line down the mountain's
side went he, feathering along through the grass and the patches of
blooming heather, jumping over boulders, and springing down from rocky
ledges with a daring that would assuredly have proved fatal to any other
kind of dog, save a Highland collie or a Scottish deerhound.  Finally he
went splashing through a broad though shallow river, and immediately
after disappeared in a clump of those sweet-scented birch trees that
grow so plentifully in "the land of the mountain and flood."

"Heigho! another lammie dead!"

The boy had gone farther up the hill, and as he spoke he threw himself
down on top of a couch made of heather, dislodging as he did so several
mossy bees that had come to suck the honey from the little purple bells.

Quite a work of art was this couch.  It had taken the boy all the
livelong morning and forenoon to make it, Kooran meanwhile trotting
about after him or standing by his side, with one ear pricked up, the
other down, very much interested indeed in the progress of the work, and
apparently sorry that he was only a dog and could not lend a hand.

Wouldst know how this couch was built?  First and foremost, then, the
lad had sought out a proper site, flat and smooth, on which to make it.
This was chosen close to a steep-rising rock far up the mountain's side,
and whence he could see not only all the country far and wide, but the
grazing ground of his flock of sheep some distance down beneath him.

Under the rock, but fully exposed to the rays of the summer sun, for
Kenneth was not a bit afraid of spoiling his complexion.  Indeed, such
an accident would have been impossible, for neither his face nor his
knees--he wore the Highland garb--could have been one whit browner than
they were.  And as for the sun giving him a headache, that was out of
the question--the sun's rays had not the power.  For when taking a
_siesta_, as shepherd lads are wont to do sometimes, his favourite
attitude was lying on his back with one arm under his head and his face
upturned to the god of day, for he feared the sun no more than does
yonder eagle that goes circling up and up towards it, even as moths, on
a summer's evening, go wheeling round and round the lamp flame.

A black, bare, bleak-looking rock it was, but canopied over with the
greenest of green moss and trailing saxifrages, bearing tiny flowerets
of pink and white and blue.

Quite a work of art was this heather couch, and as perfect as any one
could wish to see it.  Not from any place near to the rock, however, had
the boy pulled the heather with which he formed it.  There was something
of the poet and the artist about the lad, and he would never have dreamt
of spoiling the gorgeous purple carpet that grew on the hill immediately
in front of and beneath him.  He went farther afield and higher up for
his couch material.  And he _cut_ it close off by the roots, for if you
_pull_ heather, then with the roots are sure to come up both moss and
turf.

When he had culled quite an armful, he proceeded to tie it up into
little bundles or sheaves, and so on sheaf after sheaf he manufactured,
singing to himself or talking to Kooran, until he had quite enough to
build his heather sofa withal.

Then he took all his sheaves down to the rock and commenced operations,
placing them side by side close together with the bloom uppermost, and
lo and behold, in less than half an hour, a couch soft and fragrant
enough for the dainty limbs of some fairy queen to recline upon.

It was on this heather bed, then, that Kenneth threw himself at full
length as soon as Kooran had disappeared in the distant birch wood.

For fully a quarter of an hour Kenneth lay looking up at the white-grey
clouds, that were scudding swiftly across the blue of the beautiful sky.
He was wishing he could be up there, up riding on yonder cloud, away
from the earth entirely.  "Just for a time, oh! only for a time," he
muttered; "I would come back to my sheep and Kooran.  Yonder is a
laverock," (lark).  "I can hardly see it, it has flown so high but I can
hear it, and how bonnie it sings as it flutters its wings, and seems to
fan the very clouds.  Let me see what the song says.  But no, I mustn't
sing, and I mustn't read.  Kooran will soon be back wi' the dinner, and
I haven't buried the poor lammie yet."

So saying, he jumped up.  He had a spade handy.  Alas! much to Kenneth's
sorrow, that spade had been used many times too often this summer, for
it had been a bad season among the sheep.  He got the spade, and carried
that and the dead lamb far up above the spot where he had cut the
heather.  Here the mountain was split as it were in two, or rather there
were two hills, with a green strath or glen between, formed thousands of
years or ages agone, by the gradual descent of some mighty glacier.

The glade was green and in many places soft, though by no means boggy.
Near a bush Kenneth quickly dug a grave, and with a sigh he laid the
lamb therein, and covered it up, laying the sod down again, so that it
was scarcely discernible from the turf around it.

Then he shouldered his spade and prepared to go back.  But remembering
something else, he made a detour and came at last to a patch of whins.

Hidden in a cosy corner close to the ground was a nest well lined with
feathers, and the little bird popped stealthily out as he approached.

"Oh! the beauties," cried the boy, "the bonnie wee `hoties,'" (a kind of
finch).  "There were four white and red eggs when I saw you last, and
there lie four naked gorbles, gaping up at me with wide yellow mouths.
Now that nest is easily seen, and if other boys find it when I'm no'
here, they'll kill the young and break the mither's heart.  I'll try and
hide it.  It's maybe the last nest I'll find this season."  As he spoke
he looked about, and soon found a branchlet of withered whins, which he
placed carefully in front of the nest, then took up his spade again and
was about to withdraw, when his eyes lighted on one of those curious
green knolls, that are common enough in some bare mountain glens in the
Scottish Highlands.

"A fairy hill!" he said half aloud.  "I do wonder now if there are such
things as fairies, and if on moonlight nights they come oot, and dance
on this green hillock.  Oh! wouldn't I like to see them just!  I've a
good mind to come and watch here some bonnie night.  I could bring
Kooran; I wouldna be feared if Kooran was with me."

He climbed up to the top of the green knoll as he spoke.  It was
perfectly round and smooth, and the grass grew softer and greener here
than anywhere else in all the glade.  "Why," he said, "here is a hole
near the top for all the world like a lum," (chimney).  "Is it possible,
I wonder, that fairies do live inside?"

Down he went now and commenced marching round and round the knoll,
prodding it everywhere as he went with his long sharp spade.  The spade
sank deep each time he thrust it in, until he came round to the upper
side, and here it rang against a stone.

The boy went to work with a will, and soon laid that stone bare.  It was
merely a large flat slab and quite loose.  Kenneth leapt up above it,
and using the spade as a lever, he prised it up, and over it fell,
revealing to the boy's astonished gaze the entrance to a dark cave.
Here was indeed a discovery, and a discovery, too, that dovetailed most
completely and perfectly with this lad's romantic nature.

"Well," he said, "this _is_ something to think about at last.  But I
must go to dinner now.  Kooran must come with me to explore."

He left his spade and went away singing down the glade, and back to his
heather couch.

But Kooran had not returned, so the lad, giving a look first to see that
the sheep were all right, lay down and took out a volume of songs and
commenced to read.  Poetry, however, had lost its charm to-day, for his
mind would, in spite of all he could do, revert to that dark cave in the
fairy knoll.  So he threw down the book and gave himself up to the
pleasant occupation of castle-building.

The day was warm and sultry, the bees were humming lazily from heather
bloom to heather bloom, and high up against the fleecy cloudlets the
laverock still fluttered and sang; no wonder Kenneth's eyelids drooped,
and that he soon lost himself in dreams of fairyland.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kenneth's mother lived in the long low turf-thatched cottage beyond the
birch wood.  He had neither sister nor brother, and for many a long year
his father had been quietly sleeping in the humble little churchyard
that surrounded the ruins of the old parish kirk.

"Oh, Kooran, doggie, here you are," cried Kenneth's mother as the dog
came trotting in, open-mouthed and gasping with the race he had had.
"Here ye are, and I haven't milked the cow yet.  But I won't be long,
laddie."

Kooran signified his intention of waiting, and threw himself down on the
kitchen floor, but not before he had lapped up all the cat's milk.
Pussy jumped down from the three-legged stool, near the peat fire, and
began purring and rubbing herself against Ivooran's chin.  The cat and
dog were the best of friends; perhaps pussy thought it was good policy
to keep in with Kooran.

As soon as Kenneth's mother had milked the cow, she filled a tin flagon
with the rich white fluid, made up a large parcel of buttered scones and
cheese, tied the whole in a large red napkin, and put it on the floor.

Kooran was up and off before the cat could have winked, had she wanted
to wink.

He took time to recross the stream and held the parcel high up as he did
so, but he did not let the grass grow under his feet, ere he returned to
the spot where he had left his young master.  He was not there, but
Kooran soon found him asleep on the fragrant heather couch.  The dog
dropped the bundle, sat down and looked at his master, and considered.
This did not wake him, so Kooran gave vent to an impatient whine or two.
As even that did not wake the sleeping boy, the dog licked his cheek,
then clawed at his arm with his paw, and finally Kenneth sat up, rubbed
his eyes, and then burst out laughing.

"What silly dreams I've had," he said, proceeding to undo the knot on
the napkin, "such silly dreams!  But go and fetch your dish, doggie."

Kooran trotted off, and was back again in a moment with a tin saucer,
and the scones and milk were shared.

"But oh!  Kooran," continued the boy presently, "I've such news for
you."

The dog pricked his ears, and turning his head a little on one side,
looked wondrous wise.

"No," said Kenneth, "it isn't rats, and it isn't rabbits.  There is
never anything else in your noddle, Kooran, but rats and rabbits.  It's
a cave, Kooran.  Of course you don't know what a cave is, but here,--
there is some more dinner for you.  Eat that, and then we'll go and
explore."

The boy and his dog started off up the glen immediately after, and
Kooran, knowing there was something on the _tapis_, commenced to frisk
and bark around his young master.

"That won't do, Kooran," said the boy, shaking his finger at his
companion.  "Ye mustna do that.  Look down there at the sheep; every
single one o' them has stopped eating to snuff the air.  Come to heel
and keep quiet."

They soon reached the fairy knoll, and as soon as Kooran saw the hole,
his mind still running on rats and rabbits, he disappeared inside.

Never a rat nor rabbit was there, but several unwholesome-looking bats
came whirring out, and dazzled by the sunlight, dropped into the first
bush they came to.  Kenneth himself now entered the cave, spade in hand,
and as soon as his eyes got used to the darkness, he began to examine it
thoroughly.  It was large and roomy, the walls and floor of solid stone,
with marks of tools thereon, as if the place had either been wholly
excavated or enlarged by human hands.  The light glimmered down the
chimney and fell on some large round brown article.  It was a huge
kettle.  Then, young though he was, Kenneth knew that at some time or
other this cave had been occupied not by fairies, but by a gang of
smugglers.

"It was wise of them," thought Kenneth, "to use a place like this."

Well might he think so, for even to this day, in remote districts of the
Highlands, so much of superstition clings around these fairy knolls that
no peasant would dare to go near them after nightfall.

Now there is one thing in which Scotland and Germany have long resembled
each other.  The very poorest people belonging to the two countries have
from time immemorial been taught to read and write.  Kenneth had had the
advantages of an education far superior to most lads of his class and
age.  He had spent many a long year at the parish school and evening
school, his mother had taught him, the clergyman's daughter had helped
him, but, better than all this, he had helped himself.

When talking, as must have already been perceived, he sometimes made use
of Scotch words and phrases.  He did so, not because he could not speak
pure English, but simply because they are often more expressive than the
Saxon idiom.

"Well, Kooran," said Kenneth, "this is the best find ever we made.
Dinna ye think so, doggie?"

But Kooran's nose was turned up to the roof, and his eyes wide with
excitement, for he perceived, clinging by its claws up there, the
strangest-looking rat ever he had seen in his life before.  A rat, and
still not a rat, for it had wings; yes, and it could fly, too, for even
as he gazed it let go its hold and made straight for the doorway.
Kooran was far too quick for it, though.  He sprang up, and next moment
it lay half-dead apparently between his two forepaws.

"Strangest thing ever I came across," Kooran appeared to observe as he
looked wonderingly up into his young master's face.  "Rats flying; this
_must_ be a fairy knoll, and I feel half afraid."

"That's a bat, Kooran, a bat, boy, and you mustn't touch it.  Look at
its two rows of white and glittering wee teeth.  Poor little thing!
Kooran, it is well-nigh dead.  And this cave really belongs by rights to
that bat and his brothers.  We'll tie it up in the napkin, and you shall
carry it home, and mother will cure it and let it fly off again."

As he spoke the boy suited the action to his words.

"Yes, Kooran, this is a grand discovery.  After reading `Robinson
Crusoe' so often, I've always wished to have an island all to myself;
but a cave, Kooran, is nearly as good as an island.  I wonder what
Dugald McCrane will say about it.  I'm sure he will help me to make
things to furnish it, and we'll have our dinner here, Kooran, and a fire
when the weather grows cold, and everything so jolly.  Come, we must go
this very evening and see Dugald McCrane."

True to his word, when Kenneth had driven his sheep into their fold for
the night, and had eaten his supper at his mother's fireside, then,
instead of taking down his books and lying down on the great wooden dais
to read by the light of the little black whale-oil lamp, with its wicks
of peeled and dried rushes, he got up whistled to Kooran, and said to
his mother,--

"I'm going down the glen, mother."

"Dinna be lang, laddie, dinna be lang," was all his mother said.

It was a clear moonlight night, all the brighter stars were shining, and
there was hardly a cloud to be seen.

Kenneth had two long Scotch miles to walk, down into a thicket of fir
trees first, across a rustic bridge, under which the brown stream was
dashing and swirling and ever and anon breaking itself into foam against
the boulders.  It was very dark down here, but Kenneth was soon away out
into the open country again, and the roar of the river was no more
heard.  By-and-bye the road led through a wood of oak, ash, and elm
trees, with now and then the dark head of a pine tree shooting high up
into the sky.  The moonlight showed in patches here all along the road,
there was the sound of falling water not far off, mingling with the
whispering of the wind among the leaves, now crisp with the sunshine of
the long bright summer, and there was occasionally the mournful cry of
the brown owl, which made Kenneth feel lonesome and "eerie," and he was
not sorry when he was clear of that dark gloomy wood, and saw up on a
hillside the light shining yellow through the blind of Keeper McCrane's
cottage.

A black retriever came rushing down, growling and showing his teeth, but
when he saw it was Kenneth he wagged his bell-rope of a tail, and bade
him and Kooran welcome.

Kenneth left his dog in the garden to dance and caper about with the
retriever.  No doubt Kooran told this black dog all about the flying
rats.  Kenneth just opened the door and walked straight in.

Both Dugald and his young wife jumped up from their seats beside the
fire, and welcomed Kenneth, and their only boy, a wonderful little
fellow of some nine or ten summers old, with hair not unlike in colour
to a bundle of oaten straw, got out of bed and ran to pull Kenneth by
the jacket, without waiting to dress.

Dugald and his wife and boy all listened with wondering eyes to the
story of the fairy knoll.

"Bless me, dear laddie," said Mrs McCrane, "were you no' afraid to
venture in?"

"I'll tell you what we'll do," said the keeper.  "We'll go up the glen
and see the old witch wife, Nancy Dobbell.  She can tell us all about
it.  They tell me she knows everything that ever happened for a hundred
years back and more."

"Will she no' be in bed?" said his wife.

"In bed?" said Dugald.  "Not she.  She never goes to bed till `the wee
short hour ayont the twal,' and there is no saying what she may be doing
till then."

"Well, let us go," cried Kenneth, starting up.

One glance at the walls of the room in Dugald's cottage, that did duty
as both kitchen and dining-hall, would have given a stranger an insight
into both the character and calling of the chief inmate.  Never a
picture adorned the room, but dried grasses and ferns did duty instead,
and here were the skins of every kind of wild animal and bird to be
found in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands, the foumart or polecat,
the whitterit or weasel, the wild cat and fox, ptarmigan, plovers of
every kind, including the great whaup or curlew, hawks, owls, and even
the golden-headed eagle itself stood stuffed in a corner, with glaring
fiery eyes and wings half outspread.

"Come," said Dugald.

And away went the keeper and Kenneth, the two dogs following closely at
their masters' heels, as if to protect them from all harm.

CHAPTER TWO.

KENNETH AND HIS FRIENDS.

  "Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes,
  And fondly broods with miser care;
  Time but the impression deeper makes,
  As streams their channels deeper wear."

  Burns.

Scene: A long, low-thatched cottage, in the midst of a wild, bleak
moorland.  No other hut nor house in sight.  Around the cottage is a
garden or kail-yard, with a fence of flat, slab-like stones.  In this is
a gate half open, and hanging by one hinge.  The cottage has its door in
the gable, and is windowless, save for some holes 'twixt thatch and
eaves, through which light is now glimmering.  A bright round moon is
riding in the sky, among a few white clouds, that look like wings.
Coming towards the gateway, two figures may be seen, both in the
Highland garb.  Behind them two dogs.

"Losh! man," said Dugald McCrane, "I'm almost 'feared to gang farther.
Who knows what company she may have in this lonesome dreary spot?  Hark!
What was that?"

Dugald started and stared about him in some trepidation as the prolonged
and mournful shriek of an owl rose on the night air.

"It is only an owl," said Kenneth, laughing.

"Ach! man," said Dugald, "it is not me that's afraid of an owlet, but
goodness be about us, Kenneth, there are owls _and_ owls.  Hush! there
it goes again.  Losh! look how the dogs are shaking and trembling?"

It was true what Dugald had said; both the retriever and collie had
thrown themselves at their masters' feet, and gave every indication of
mortal dread.  After all, it was merely owing to a kind of magnetic
influence which fear always has.  This had been communicated from Dugald
to his dog, and from the retriever to the collie.

"It's nothing," said Kenneth, "nothing, Dugald.  I'm not afraid, if you
are."

"Fear!" replied the stalwart Highland keeper.  "Dugald never feared the
face o' clay.  But look how they're shakin' yet.  These dogs hear voices
we cannot listen to and live; they see things that human eyes, dare not
scan.  Dinna deny it, Kenneth, lad; dinna seek to deny it.

"Do you remember, Kenneth, that dreary, dark December night two years
ago, when Walie's wife--goodness be about us--went and hanged herself in
the woods o' Alva, and how Shot there sat a' the livelong night on the
top of the old turf wall and howled so mournfully?  It made me tremble
in my bed to hear him.  And did you no' tell me that your Kooran did the
same one night the year before last, and that next morning a hat and a
stick were found on the brink o' Beattie's mill-dam, and poor Jock
Grey's body stark and stiff--"

"Stop! stop!" cried Kenneth.  "This is no time of night for such
stories.  Kooran, come on."

And the boy began to lead the way up through the garden to Nancy's door.

"Just a moment," said Dugald, laying a hand on Kenneth's shoulder.
"Have you got your flute?"

"Yes."

"Well, just give us a toot.  If Nancy has company that's no' canny, it
will give them time to bolt up the chimney.  Sirs!  Sirs!"

Kenneth laughed, put his flute together, and started a merry air.

"The Campbells are coming; hurrah, hurrah?" was the tune he played.

Dugald forgot his fear, and began to sing.  The "twa dogs" forgot
theirs, and began to dance and caper and bark, and in the very middle of
this "rant" the cottage door opened, and Nancy herself appeared.

"Come in, come in, you twa daft laddies," she cried, "or 'deed you'll
start Nancy hersel' to dance, for as auld as she is.  Come in; you'll
leave the dogs outside, winna ye, for fear o' my poor cat?"

"Ay, Grannie," said Dugald, "we'll leave the dogs outside, and I'm
thinkin' neither o' them would show face inside your door if you asked
them e'er so kindly.  My Shot there hasn't forgotten the salute your cat
gave him last time he came here.  If you mind, Grannie, she jumped on
his back and rode him a' round the kail-yard, and never missed him a
whack, till he flew out o' the gate and ran helter-skelter o'er the
moor.  I dinna think your cat's canny, Grannie."

"What a beautifu' nicht!" said Grannie; "but come in, laddies."

"You're sure you have no company?" said Dugald, still hesitating to
enter.

"Come, ye stoopid loon," she replied.  "There's nobody here but me and
the cat.  Sit doon.  Tak' a stool, Kennie, my bonnie boy."

A bonnie boy?  Yes, there was no denying it.  Kenneth, our hero, was a
bonnie boy, and gave promise of growing up into a fine handsome man.

His broad blue bonnet was usually worn pretty far back, but even had he
worn it forward, I do not think it would have been possible for it to
suppress the wealth of dark short curls that rose up over his broad
brown brow.  His cheeks had the tint that health, the winds, and the sun
had given them.  His lips were rosy, and when he laughed he showed a set
of teeth even and white, and a merry twinkle went upwards and danced
about his dark, dark eyes.  But at all other times those eyes were
somewhat dreamy withal.  Such was Kenneth McAlpine, and it was probably
that same dreamy, thoughtful look in his eyes that made him appear older
than he really was, for he had not yet seen his thirteenth year.

But there was one other reason to account for Kenneth's looking somewhat
older than his years.  He had already come through a good deal of grief.

His father had once been a prosperous crofter or small farmer.  Not that
the crofts in Glen Alva were very large or very wealthy, but, when well
cultivated, the land was grateful and yielded up its fruits abundantly.

Then the sea was not very far away, only a few miles, and fish therein
were abundant and to be had only for the catching.

It was the broad Atlantic Ocean whose waves broke and thundered
ceaselessly on the rocky shore just beyond the hills yonder.  Only two
years ago--what long, long years they had seemed to Kenneth!--this lad
had used to spend many an hour by the seashore.  Indeed, every hour that
he could spare from school, or from home, he spent with the ocean.

I am quite right in saying _with_ the ocean instead of _by_ the sea, for
Kenneth looked upon the sea as a friend and as a companion; he used to
speak with it and talk to it; it seemed to understand him, and he _it_.
What baskets of glorious fish he used to get from the sea! and what
dozens of splendid steel blue lobsters and lordly crabs!

Kenneth used to fish from the rocks on days when he could not borrow old
Duncan Reed's cobble.  Old Duncan was frail and rheumatic, and could not
always go out to fish himself, but one way or another he had taught
Kenneth nearly all he knew about the sea and fishing.  He had taught him
to row, and to scull, and to make and bait and busk a line, and to swim
as well.

The making of a good strong line used to be a great pleasure to Kenneth.
It was manufactured from horsehair.  There was first and foremost the
getting of this horsehair, for quite a quantity was required.  It
consisted of combings from the manes and tails of horses, and many a
mile Kenneth used to pad to procure it.  The main source of supply was
the stables of a noble lord who lived in a great old-fashioned castle
miles from Glen Alva.  For the horsehair so obtained Kenneth used to
give to the stablemen largess in fish.  Then, having obtained his supply
and carried it home, it was quite a long and tedious process to plait
the line.  But Kenneth knew no such word as tire, so he worked and
worked away at early morning and late at night, and as yard after yard
of the line was made, it was rolled upon a reel roughly hewn from a
branch of the silvery birch, and probably at the end of a fortnight the
line would be complete, and away Kenneth would rush like a young deer
over the hills.

Nancy's house on the moor lay between him and the shore, and however
great a hurry Kenneth was in, he did not fail to call and speak a few
moments with the "old witch wife," as she was universally called, the
truth being that she was no more a witch than you or I, reader, only she
was an herbalist, and wise in many other ways.

Yes, Kenneth would always find time to call at old Nancy's hut, and he
never left the house without a drink of milk or whey--for Nancy kept a
cow--or a cupful of heather ale.  Nancy was famed far and near for
making heather ale, and on Sundays the lads and lasses from a good way
round, used to make a pilgrimage to Nancy's and taste her wondrous brew.

Many a word of good advice Nancy had for Kenneth, too, her bonnie boy,
and many a blessing.

He would soon arrive at the old fisherman's hut, which was a boat turned
upside down and let into a crevice of the rocks high enough up to
prevent green seas from swamping it, although in stormy weather, with a
west wind blowing, the spray used to dash right over the roof.

"On days like these," old Duncan used to say, "I don't need to put any
salt in my porridge, for the sea-bree that drops down the chimney makes
it salt enough."

When Duncan got Kenneth's horsehair line, he used to unroll it and try
the strength of it, foot by foot and yard by yard, and if it bore the
test, then Duncan would put his hand on the lad's head and say,--

"My dear Kennie, you'll be as good a fisherman as myself yet."

And Kennie would smile, and say he hoped so, for he never meant to be
anything else.  How little he knew then the truth of the poet's words,--

  "There is a Divinity that shapes our ends,
  Rough-hew them as we will."

There isn't much fancy work about the flies one needs to catch fish
with, on the western shores of Scotland, nor about the rod you use.
Only a strongish hook, and tied over that a morsel of white feather or
even a bit of wool from the back of a lamb.  The fish are not particular
when hungry, and they nearly always are hungry, and there are times when
you really cannot draw them in fast enough.

But at certain seasons of the year they don't rise; they then prefer
bait lowered down to them.  They take breakfast in bed.  The bait which
they love most dearly of all is the inside of a crab, but as this is
rather expensive, Kenneth and Duncan Reed were in the habit of using
limpets, and they never failed to have good fortune with these.

Of course the limpets had to be gathered first, and as Kenneth was young
and Duncan was old, it was the work of the boy to collect these.  And
when the tide was back you might have seen him at any time, far away out
among the weed-covered boulders and rocks, with a chisel and hammer to
knock the limpets off and a tiny basket on his back to pop them into.

Nor was there a deal of fancy work to be learned in rowing or sculling a
cobble, but then, you know, the fisherman and little Kennie used to
venture quite a long distance out to sea, for there was an island three
miles away where the fish were very numerous, and thither they often
went.  And sometimes the sea was both rough and wild before they got
back, and skill was then needed to keep her right and straight.  For had
a sea struck her broadside on, it might have capsized or staved the
cobble, and if a great wave had broken over the stern, it might have
swamped her, and she would have sunk, and both Kennie and his friend
would then have been food for the creatures that dwell down in the dark
caves beneath the ocean.

As to swimming, Kenneth seemed to take to it quite naturally, and many a
little adventure he had in the water.

Once when swimming he was bitten on the knee by a horrible fish called
on the shores of the Atlantic the miller's thumb.  It is a kind of skate
or ray of immense size, with a fearfully large mouth filled with sharp
teeth.

On this particular day the sun had been very bright and the water warm
and clear, and Kenneth swam a long distance from the shore.  When he
returned he was very faint, and his knee was bleeding; he fell and lost
consciousness almost immediately after he reached the pebbly beach.
Duncan ran to his assistance, and soon got him round; then he bound up
his knee.

"Was it a shark?"  Kenneth had inquired.

"Oh! horrible! no, Kennie, no, for had a shark seized you, his teeth are
so arranged and so hook-like that he couldn't have let you go again had
he wanted to ever so much."

Another day, when Duncan and he were hauling in a hand line with an
immensely great cod at the end of it, suddenly, for some unexplained
reason or other, the line slipped, and almost at the same moment Kenneth
fell overboard.

A codfish of say twenty pounds pulls with fearful force.

Kenneth was dragged under the water.

It was a trying time then for old Duncan's nerves.  Would the poor boy
be dead before he got the great fish checked and in charge again?

Duncan dragged in the line as speedily as he dared.

Oh! how his heart had throbbed to think that there was a possibility of
the line breaking, and his little friend being kept under the water till
dead.

And oh! how joyful he was when Kenneth reappeared.

Kenneth really came up smiling, though he was spluttering a great deal
as well.  "I'm sure," he said when he got into the boat again, and the
fish was there as well, "I'm sure I've swallowed fully a pint of salt
water, Duncan."

Yes, Kenneth laughed heartily about it, but poor old Duncan was weeping,
and before he could be himself again he must take off his broad blue
bonnet and kneel down upon it in the stern sheets of the cobble, and
return thanks to Him who holds the sea in the hollow of His hand.

There were days in summer when the sea was so blue and bright and still,
that I think Kenneth used almost to go to sleep while floating on its
surface.

Gathering the eggs of the sea-birds from off the cliffs and rocks was
dangerous sport, but Kenneth loved it all the more on that account.

But he loved the sea in storm as well, and used to play among the
billows and spray along the shore, or venture out a little distance for
the pleasure of being rolled up again like a log of wood upon the beach.

Kenneth really could have said with the immortal Byron--

  "And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy
  Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be,
  Borne, like thy bubbles, onward; from a boy
  I wantoned with thy breakers--they to me
  Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
  Made them a terror, 'twas a pleasing fear,
  For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
  And trusted to thy billows far and near,
  And laid my hand upon thy mane, as I do here."

Old Duncan Reed owned and worked a little lobster fishery of his own.
And before the great grief came that deprived poor Kenneth of a father,
he used to take great delight in helping the fisherman with this part of
his work.  It was very simple.  They had wooden cages which they sank at
the bottom of a deep pool among the rocks.  There was a stone or two at
the bottom of each cage to make it sink, and it was lowered down at
night by a rope which was attached at the top of the water to a wooden
float.

The cages were baited, and Duncan used to find it a capital plan to put
a live crab or lobster into the cage.  There was a hole at the top of
each cage for the creatures to crawl in, but it was so arranged that
once in they did not get out again.

As soon as one was sunk, rejoiced to find himself once more in his
native element, the imprisoned shell-fish would begin to eat.  And
presently round would come another crab or lobster and look in for a
little at him with his eyes, which, you know, are upon stalks.

"You seem to be enjoying yourself in there," the newcomer would say.

The imprisoned animal would wave a claw at him, as much as to say,--

"Oh! very nicely indeed, but go away; don't stand there and stare at a
fellow when he is having his dinner.  It is rude."

"Is it good, though?" the other would ask.

"Delicious!" the reply would be.

"How ever did you get inside?"

"Look and see."

Then the new-come lobster would find the hole in the top of the cage,
and in he would pop.  And presently more and more lobsters would come
round and pop in one by one.

Well, but when they wanted to pop out again they would not find it so
easy.  In fact, there would be no way out for them, until Duncan hauled
up the creel and pulled them forth to be boiled.

"It is so easy to get into a trap, but so difficult to get out again,"
old Duncan would say to Kenneth, "so, my dear laddie, always all your
life be sure to look before you leap."

Old Duncan was a very merry old man; he used to tell Kenneth such funny
stories, and tales of the deep blue sea, and all about sea-fairies, and
water babies, and mermaids that live deep down beneath the ocean in
coral caves.  I do not think that old Duncan believed in these things
himself, nor that he expected Kenneth to believe in them either, but
they helped to pass the time, and often of a winter's evening the boy
would stay in the fisherman's hut so late that night came on before he
started for Glen Alva, and the stars would be all shining as he took his
road across the hills and over the dreary moorland where Nancy lived.

Old Duncan Reed did not know the time except by the sun, and Kenneth had
no watch, so he could never be sure on occasions like these what o'clock
it really was.

But one thing Kenneth never did forget, and that was to bring a few fish
or a lobster or a lovely crab for Nancy.

If her light was burning when he reached the little cottage, then he
would go in; if not, he knew she had gone to bed, so he would hang the
string of fish to the door latch--a very old-fashioned one with a
thumb-piece--and go quietly away with Kooran.  Or if it was a lobster
with its claws tied, he used to tether it to the foot of a rose tree
that grew near the door, and poor old Nancy found it in the morning, and
was thankful accordingly.  I'm sure of this, that Nancy never said her
prayers without asking guidance, and a blessing for her bonnie boy.

And it was in this very cottage that Kenneth and Duncan the keeper now
found themselves, in front of a nice peat fire, for though it was yet
early in autumn, in this bleak Highland moorland the evenings struck
chill and cold.

Nancy herself sat in the corner, with her grey grimalkin on her
shoulder.  The cat seemed asleep, only she had one eye open, and that
eye was watching the door.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE STORY OF THE FAIRY KNOLL.

  "I've heard my reverend Grannie say
  In lanely glens ye like to stray,
  Or where auld ruined castles grey
              Nod to the moon.
  Ye fright the nightly wanderer's way,
              Wi' eldritch croon."

  Burns.

[Croon--low mournful moan.]

Scene: The interior of Nancy Dobbell's cottage.  Nancy and her visitors
round the peat fire, the light from which ever and anon brings the
features of each out in bold relief, from the Rembrandtine darkness in
the background.  Nancy is talking, but knitting as well.  Click, click,
clickety, click, go the wires, sometimes very fast indeed, at other
times more slowly, as if keeping time with Nancy's thoughts and her
spoken words.

"And what brings my bairns so late across the muir the nicht?" she
asked.

"We knew ye wadna be in bed, Grannie," said Dugald.  "The moon is
shinin' so brichtly, I had expected to meet ye on the muir, gatherin'
herbs by its ghastly licht.  We heard the owlet cryin'; had we met you,
Grannie, it would have scared our senses awa'."

"I wouldn't have been afraid, Grannie," said Kenneth.

For a moment there was silence, the old woman's head had drooped on her
breast, and the knitting wires clicked more slowly, like a clock before
it stops.

But only for a moment; she raised her head again, and click, click,
click, went the wires as fast as before, but both Kenneth and his
companion noticed that Nancy's cheeks were wet.

"Nancy's auld and silly," she said, "but Nancy was not always so.
Heigho!"

"Oh, Grannie!" cried honest Dugald, hastening to atone for the cruelty
of his first speech, but, in his very hurry, making a poor job of it.
"Oh, Grannie, dinna say you're silly; really folk say you're wise and--
and--"

"A witch?" said Nancy, smiling.

"Well, may be so.  Who can help what people say?  But 'deed there is no'
a poor woman or man either in a' the glen or parish that hasn't a good
word to say for you.  Your simple medicines, Grannie, have brought
comfort and joy to mony a hoose, no matter where ye got them or who--
goodness be near us--helped you to gather them.  When puir Jock Kelpie
was drooned, did you no' bide and comfort the widow, and sing to her and
soothe her for weeks thegither?  When Menzies' bairns had the fever, and
no' a soul would gang near the hoose, wha tended them and cured them?
Wha but Nancy Dobbell?  And there's no' a bairn in a' the clachan that
doesn't run to meet ye, Grannie, whenever ye come o'er the muir."

The wires clicked very fast.

"And," continued Dugald, "though you're maybe no' very bonnie noo,
everybody says, `What a pretty woman Nancy must have been in her time!'"

Nancy's chin fell again, but the wires worked steadily on.  Her mind was
away back now in the distant past.  She was thinking of one summer's
evening by Saint Ronan's Well, 'neath the old monk's tree, of a plighted
troth and a broken ring, and a lad that went away to sea, and never,
never, never came back.  A broken ring, and a broken heart, a sorrow
that had shadowed her life.

Click, click, click.  Ah, well, every life has its romance.

"But Kenneth here has something to tell ye, Grannie."

Clickety, clickety, clickety, go the wires.  Nancy is all interest now,
for dearly does she love her boy Kennie.

Then Kenneth told her about the fairy knoll and the strange cave he had
found in its interior.

He told her all the story, just as we already know it; and for once only
during all that evening, the wires ceased to click, and the old woman's
hands fell on her lap as she listened.

"It was long, long ago," said Nancy.  "Your father, Kennie, was but a
boy then, just like you are noo.  And his father was but a young man--"

"Ahem!" said the superstitious Highland keeper, giving a hasty
half-frightened glance behind him into the darkness.  "Ahem! you'll not
mak' your story _very_ fearsome, will ye, Grannie?  Dinna forget the
lateness o' the nicht.  Mind that we've o'er the lonesome muir to gang
yet."

"It was long ago," said Nancy, addressing herself more particularly to
Kenneth.  "I lived then down by the kirk in the clachan, and there I was
born, and the wee village was quieter far in those days than it is even
now.  Ye know, Kennie, where the burn joins the river, where the old
ruin is among the willow trees?"

"Yes, Grannie."

"Well, that house was no ruin then.  It was deserted, though.  It had
gotten a bad name.  Nobody would take it; and it seemed falling to
pieces.  The house stood, as you know, about a mile below your fairy
knoll, and two miles beyond is the sea."

"You are right, Grannie."

"Everybody was surprised to find masons and carpenters working at Mill
House one morning.  It was let.  It had been taken by a stranger.  Even
the laird knew nought about him.  Only he paid a year's rent in advance.
That was enough for Laird McGee, who was a grippy auld man, and just as
rich as grippy.

"It was an ugly house when they made the best of it, two-storied, with
red tiles, blintering, blinking windows, and long uncanny-looking
attics.  It lay a good way back from the road.  You went along through a
thicket o' willows by a little footpath, then across a stagnant ditch,
on a rickety bridge, and this took you to the wild weedy lawn in front
of the house itself.  Even the road that led past the grounds was little
frequented, only a bridle path at best, and it ended at last in a turf
dyke [low wall], a march between twa lairds' lands; if you followed
this, it took you over the mountains to the seaside village of T--, and
the footpath went pretty close to the knoll.  A man and woman came to
live at Mill House then; they kept a man-servant, and had one child, a
pale-faced, old-fashioned-looking hunchback.  The man drove a ramshackle
trap, so that, taking them altogether, they were no favourites, all the
more in that they never put nose beyond the doorstep on the Sabbath day.

"It was always thought, though, that Innkeeper McCaskill, of our
clachan, knew more about this family than he cared to tell.  Anyhow, he
took them all their meat and groceries.  And it was noted, too, and
remarked upon that he ay took the parcel himsel', a big one it used to
be, and the auld grey mare on which he rode was as sorely laden coming
as going to Mill House.

"Sometimes, but no' very often, the hunchback laddie used to come on an
errand down to the clachan; the bairns o' the village were frightened at
him first, frightened even to call him names or throw a sod at him, as
bairns will at things that look weird and unco'.

"Corbett was the laddie's name, but the bairns ay ca'd him Corbie.

"Corbie, though, improved on acquaintance.  There seemed no harm in him,
though, woe is me, he lookit auld, auld-fashioned.

"I suppose Corbie found it lonesome at the Mill House, for whenever he
came down to the clachan he tried to mak' acquaintance with the
children.  It wasna easy to do this.  He brought them sweets and wild
berries, and bit by bit he won their hearts till Corbie was the greatest
favourite in a' the clachan.  There was only one house, though, he ever
entered, and that was McCaskill's.  But the bairns would meet him on his
return, and he ay turned his steps to the auld kirk-yard, and there, on
a flat tombstone, he would sit doon and tell them story after story.
And a more attentive audience no minister ever had even in the kirk on
Sunday.  What did Corbie tell them?  Oh! just queer auld-world stories
he'd heard tell of, or read in books.  Stories about witches and
warlocks, brownies, sprites, and spunkies.  Ay, and about the good
folks, the fairies themselves--"

"Dinna, dinna," muttered Dugald.  "Think o' the untimous hour, Grannie."

"But one day, as poor Corbie was speakin' and the bairns were listening
wi' round eyes and gaping mouths, who should appear on the scene but
Corbie's father?

"The laddie gave one low scream, like somebody in a nightmare.  Then his
father seized him, and oh! they say it was dismal to hear the howls of
the poor laddie and the sound o' the fearfu' blows.

"Corbie didn't appear again for many a day, but the human heart must
have society, and by degrees Corbie commenced story-telling again, but
no' in the kirk-yard, only down in a thicket by the riverside, and
always when there, some one was put to watch.

"I often passed that house, even at night, though the name it had now
was worse and worse.

"I had used to have business at T--, across the hills.

"But so bad a name did that road get, that even by day the boldest would
hardly venture to take the short cut to T--up along the laird's march
dyke.  Belated travellers saw lights--dead candles they called them--
flitting and flickering around the fairy knoll.  Brownies and spunkies,
they said, were met on the moor, and down by the riverside Kelpie
himsel' was often visible."

[Kelpie, in Scotch folklore a kind of bogle, half man, half bat, often
seen by midnight near the banks of ugly rivers.  He lives in deep, dark
pools.]

"A sturdy shepherd that had stayed too long at T--had met Kelpie, so
they said; he was found next day cut and bleeding at the water-side, and
was a raving maniac for weeks.

"One day I was setting out for the seaside village--I was young then,
and strong--when near the clachan I met McCaskill.

"`Can I trust ye,' he said, `to deliver a letter at the Mill House?'

"I was feared to offend by refusing, so I took it.  But lo!  I forgot it
a'thegither till I was coming hame.  It was night, too, but deliver it I
must.

"I took the road alang the auld march dyke across the hills.  The moon
was shining, but no' very brightly, givin' a feeble yellow kind o' a
licht through a haze o' drivin' clouds.

"Well, I was just near the dreariest part o' the upper glen, and no' far
from the fairy knoll.  I was wishing I were well past it, and away down
to the clachan, where I could see the lights blinking cheerily from the
houses among the trees.

"I was hurrying on, when suddenly, with an eldritch scream, something in
white sprang from behind an etnach," (juniper) "bush.

"I was a bold lass.  Some would have fainted.  My heart was in my mouth,
but I felt impelled to throw myself at the thing, whatever it was.  I
rushed forward with a frightened shriek and grasped it.  I wheeled its
face towards the moon, and what think you saw I?"

"A brownie!" said Dugald.  "Oh, Grannie, I'm all of a quiver."

"He was no brownie.  Only the auld, auld-fashioned face o' little
Corbie."

"`Let me go, Nancy.  Let me go,' he pleaded.  `My father would kill me
if he knew I was found out.'

"He wriggled out o' my hands and fled, and I hardly felt the ground
beneath my feet till I reached the low end o' the glen and found myself
opposite the gate o' Mill House.

"Then I remembered the letter.

"Dare I deliver it?

"Dare I refuse?  That would be worse.  I took the road down through the
willow thicket, and crossed the rickety auld plank bridge, and in two
minutes I was in front of the house.  There were sounds of singing and
revelry from the inside; I knocked, but wasn't heard.  Knocked louder,
and in a moment everything was dark and silent.  The door opened.  I was
seized and dragged in.  What I saw and heard at Mill House that night I
was put on oath not to tell till all were dead or gone.  I may tell you
now--they were smugglers."

"Thank goodness!" said Dugald, greatly relieved it was no worse.  "Oh!
Grannie, but you have a fearsome way o' tellin' a story."

"For twa lang years they occupied that house, but during that time
something happened that caused grief amang the village bairns.  Corbie
was missed.  Weeks flew by, and he never came back.  Then one day a
thinly-attended funeral came winding towards the kirk-yard, carrying a
wee bit coffin.

"The coffin was Corbie's, and there were many tears and mickle sorrow
amang the poor hunchback's acquaintances, I can tell ye.  His friends
went awa', and left poor Corbie in the mools, but the bairnies ne'er
forgot the grave, and mony a bonnie wreath o' buttercups and gowans did
they string and put on it in the sweet summer-time.

"Well, laddies, the Mill House was found deserted one day.  The
smugglers had gone as quietly as they had come.  But the house kept its
bad name, and so did the hills above it; and so my story ends."

"Not quite," said Dugald.  "Did the brownie never come again, or the
kelpie?  Were the dead candles seen nae mair?"

"No," said Kenneth; "don't you understand?  The brownie was the poor
boy, Corbie; the kelpie was a smuggler; and the dead candles the lights
seen at night near the cave in the fairy knoll.  That was the place
where they carried on their sinfu' trade."

"I see things clearly enough noo," said Dugald; "and I'll no' be feared
to cross the muir.  Ah, well, Grannie, you have relieved my mind."

"I'm glad o' it, laddie.  Now will Grannie take down the good Book and
read a bit?"

Grannie did.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The talk now took a cheerier turn.  Old Nancy, knowing how painfully
superstitious Dugald was, refrained from introducing anything more in
the shape of either brownie or spunkie.  And so a pleasant hour was
spent, till the old "wag-at-the-wa'" pointed to the hour of twelve, and
warned Kenneth and his friend it was high time to commence retracing
their steps across the moor.

CHAPTER FOUR.

GLOAMING IN THE GLEN--KENNIE'S CAVE.

  "Gloaming o'er the glen is falling;
      Little birds have ceased to sing,
  Flowerets now their petals faulding
      As night descends on dewy wing."

  Anon.

Scene: Half-way down the glen, where heather and patches of tilled land
end, and woodland commences.  Where the stream goes wimpling and
swirling round the boulders, underneath the rustic bridge.

At the corner, where, after crossing the bridge, the road takes a bend,
and is soon lost in the gloom of overhanging foliage, Kenneth is seated
on a stone.

At his feet lies Kooran, looking very knowing, because he has got his
ears pricked up, and his eyes very wide open, and his head thoughtfully
turned a little on one side.

Kooran knows that his master has come there to meet his friend the
Highland keeper, and that the retriever Shot will be with him, but the
keeper may come down from the brae-land on the right, or up the road
from the wood, or he may suddenly appear on the cliff top, after fording
the stream and climbing the rocks.

No need for Kenneth to listen; he has only to watch Kooran.

No sound can deceive Kooran.  He will not move from that position till
the right moment.

Not far from Kooran's extended tail, a field-mouse begins to sing a
little song.  She is hidden in under the dry moss, through which she has
driven all sorts of smooth round tunnels, for quite an engineer is the
field-mouse, and the only wonder is she ever finds her way back again to
her nest, through such a labyrinthic network of half-lighted lanes.

"Beet-ee-beet-ee-beet-ee-ee-beet-ee."  So goes her song.

Kooran never moves his head; all he does is to turn one ear back towards
his tail for a moment, but _only_ one ear.

"I hear you," he seems to say.  "Sing away, my pretty one you know I'm
busy, but wait a wee till Shot comes.  Shot and I will soon have you out
of there.  My eyes! won't we make the turf fly!"

A great bird flies right over a tree, but turns sharply in the air and
flies back affrightedly.  It was a moor-cock, but he didn't know any one
was there.  He has to take another road home.

A twig snaps; Kenneth looks in that direction.  The dog never moves.  He
knows it is only the polecat trying to reach out to a branch where a
thrush has gone to sleep.

The stream makes music in drowsy monotone, but hark! there is a plash.
It is an otter.  Kooran knows it, and does not move.  Then presently
there are close beside them apparently, two sharp dull thuds.  It is
only mother rabbit beating her heels on the ground to drive her
over-bold little ones back into their holes, and to warn every rabbit
within hearing that danger is near, and that there are a live dog and a
live boy not far off, who can't be after any good.

Sometimes the distant bleating of sheep or the pleasant lowing of kine
falls on Kenneth's ear, and anon, far up among the mountains, there is a
strange shout, half whoop, half whistle, prolonged and mournful.  At
first it is repeated about every two seconds; then Quicker and quicker
it comes, and wilder and wilder, till it ends in one long quavering
scream.

"Whoo-oop, whoo-oop, whoo-oop, whoop, whoop-oop-oop-oop-oo-oo-oo!"

It is the shriek of the curlew as he sails round and round in the air.

"Why, Kooran," says the boy at last, "what can be keeping them?"

Kooran beats his tail twice on the ground, but does not move his body.

"I hope they won't be long, dear doggie."

Kooran beats his tail once against the ground.

This means, "Have patience, master."

The sun goes down behind the hills.

Then comes still Evening on.

In the bonnie Scottish Highlands, reader, in sweet summer-time, or in
riper autumn, we cannot say with truth that night falls; no, rather
"Evening steals down."

Oh! how gently she is stealing down now on the peaceful scene around
Kenneth and Kooran.  Far down the glen yonder, where the river broadens
out in the valley, there lie long clouds of grey mist, with the tall
spruce pines glimmering green and ghost-like through them.  They are the
trailing garments of Evening.  Gradually they change to crimson as the
sun's parting rays fall on them.

But day lingers long on the hill-tops, among the steel-grey rocks, among
boulders that stand boldly out from the dark background like blocks of
snow, and among patches of purple heather.  Evening sees that day must
go at last, so she hies away to put the flowers to sleep.

"Sleep, sleep, my gentle flowers," she says, "for the day is dying fast,
and the dews will fall and blight you."

She whispers to the gowans [mountain daisies] first, and the "wee modest
crimson-tipped flowers" fold their petals like sea-anemones, and go
softly to sleep.  She lightly touches the pimpernels, the crimson and
the pink-eyed, and they curl their flower-leaves and sink to rest.  She
breathes upon the wild convolvulus that trails among the grass, and it
twists up its silken blossoms till they look like little wisps of
calico, pink and white.  Even the hardy heather bells creep closer
together, and the star-like blossoms of the bramble that clothe the
banks shrink smaller as she brushes them with her wings.

Then Evening speaks to the west wind.

"Blow softly, gentle west wind," she says; "blow softly through the
feathery larches and the needled pines; make the leaves of the russet
oaks and the silvery drooping birches sing soft lullabies, that my
children the flowers may sleep."

And the west wind obeys her, and goes sighing through the trees, and all
the flowerets nod and sleep.

The linnet has long gone to bed, close hidden under the whin bush.  The
tom-tit creeps closer against a patch of lichen that grows on the stem
of an old ash tree.  The cushat in the thicket of spruce hears the west
wind's lullaby, and ceases to croodle.  The blackbird and thrush hide
themselves in the hawthorn tree; only the robin still sings on the top
rail of the old bridge.

"I will sing all night," the robin says.  "I will sing with the trees
and the west wind till the sun returns."

"Twhoo-hoo-hoo!" shrieks the owl, and Robin flies away.

Then Evening goes to the hedgehog, to the fox, to the foumart, the
whitterit, the bat, and the vole.

"Come out now, come out now," she cries to these, "for the moon is
coming, and danger has fled with the daylight far over the hills."

But the lithe green snake, and the deadly adder, and the toad have heard
the invitation too, and lie closer under cover or creep into their
holes, for enemies are abroad.

Then slowly and solemnly over the distant hills uprises the moon.

And so gloaming gives place to night.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Something black came feathering along at last, and next moment Shot,
with his jacket quite wet, and very much out of breath with running, was
kissing his friend the collie.

Very soon after Dugald and Kenneth were shaking hands.

"You thought I wasn't coming?" said Dugald.

"Indeed, you're right, but I had almost fallen asleep."

"I've had such a chase after a couple of poachers.  Didn't you hear me
firing?  No?  But troth, I did have a rap at one of them.  Didn't kill
him?  Man, no, and more's the pity.  Troth, Kennie, lad, there are too
many about.  But come along, till we see the fairy's knoll.  Man, it's a
whole week since I've seen you.  How's the sheep?"

"Doing well.  No more late lambs.  No more feeble dying ones."

The keeper shouldered his gun; the two dogs speedily tore up the grass
where the field-mouse had been singing.  They destroyed all her tunnels
and mossy lanes, but they hadn't time to unearth the mouse herself.

Away up over the hills went the friends.  Up, and up, and up.  When on
the brow of the mountain they were to cross they must have been fifteen
hundred feet above the sea level.  Down beneath them the rolling country
was slumbering in the misty moonlight, only the river meandered through
it all and sparkled like a thread of silver.

It was a near cut they had taken; they had now only to descend a little
way, and, behold, they were at the cave.

And soon in it.

"I'll light the lamp," said Kenneth, and in a moment more the interior
was illuminated.

"Well, I do declare this is grand!  Never in this world before had
shepherd such a shelter, surely!"

So he well might say.  Kenneth had cleaned the cave out, bedded the
floor with a carpet of withered brackens, hung a huge oil lamp in it,
which gave light and warmth both, built rude seats round it, made a rude
table, and conveyed hither his books, his fishing-gear, and even his
flute.

"Isn't it delightful!" cried Kenneth, laughing till his eyes danced and
sparkled in the moonlight.

"Oh! it is grand!" said Dugald, sitting down all the better to view the
place.

"I can eat my dinner here, you know," said Kenneth, "and read my books,
and study at night."

"At night!" exclaimed honest Dugald.  "Wad ye no' be feared, man?" he
added solemnly.  "Are there no bogles about?  Losh! there might be even
ghosts.  Or, man! just fancy a wee fairy body coming in through the door
when you were a' by yoursel'!"

"Oh!" cried the boy, "that is too good ever to be true.  I should
rejoice to see a fairy."

"Well, man, rather you than me.  But tak' your flute and play a tune, to
banish eerie thoughts."

Kenneth put his instrument together and commenced.

Shot sat down on the brackens and commenced too.

Dugald turned Shot out of the cave, but Kooran had better manners and
was allowed to stay.  It was the "Flowers o' the Forest" that Kenneth
played, and to this sweetly mournful air Dugald listened entranced.

"Silly Dugald!" some would say, for his very eyes were moist.

"Ah!  Kennie, man," he said at last, "I hope you may never live to play
that dear auld lilt in a foreign land with the tears rinnin' o'er your
face."

"What mean ye, Dugald?"  Kenneth said.

"Mean?" cried Dugald almost fiercely.  "Why, this, lad: that news came
to-day to the clachan that our auld laird, that has ever been sae kind
to us, is bankrupt, and has sold his fine estate to an American--to a
foreigner, Kennie."

"Don't say so?"

"But I do say so, and I fear it's an owertrue tale, lad.  The place that
knows us noo may soon know us no more.  For they tell me he is going to
evict the tenants, pull the clachan down, and turn our bonnie glen into
a forest for deer, knock doon the dear auld kirk, Kennie, that you and I
were christened in, and have sung psalms in Sunday after Sunday, knock
doon our kirk, give our roofs to the flames,--ay, Kennie, and level the
graves o' those we hold dear!"

"I really cannot believe all this, Dugald.  Oh! it would kill my
mother."

"Poor laddie!" said Dugald, laying his hand kindly on Kenneth's
shoulder.  "Poor laddie!  Grief has been your share in the world of
late.  Two or three years ago, when your father lived, what a merry boy
you were!  But your father, once a thrifty crofter, had been reduced to
a humble shepherd, and when that broke his heart, and the Lord took him,
his brave boy Kennie left school and tended the sheep, and his industry
supports a widowed mother.  Ay, lad, Kennie, it will gang hard on you
and hard on your mother to leave Glen Alva."

Kenneth looked the picture of despair.  His flute had fallen from his
hand, and lay unheeded among the brackens.

"To leave my mother," he muttered, speaking apparently to himself, "to
go into a foreign land, that were bad, but to know that the very glen
itself was altered, the old kirk roofless, the houses heaps of ruins, to
have nothing to look back to, nothing at home to love--oh!  Duncan,
Duncan, that wouldn't be absence from home; it would be banishment,
Duncan, banishment and exile."

"Let us try no' to think about it, Kennie.  Dinna look so woe-begone,
man, or you'll mak' me sorry that I've told you."

The boy turned quickly round.

"Oh! but say you've been but joking.  Say it is not true, Duncan."

"Oh hey!" was Duncan's answer--a big sigh, that was all.

"But you know," said Duncan, after a pause, "nobody is sure yet of
anything."

The boy laughed now.

"Ha! ha! yes," he cried, tearing himself away from gloomy thoughts.
"We'll have hope.  We won't think about it, will we?  Ha! ha! no, we
won't think about it.  And I'll never say a single word to my mother
about the matter.  It _may_ pass, you know.

"And so," he continued, "you really like my cave.  Well, little Archie,
your son, will often be here with me.  And you must come too, and we'll
have such fun.  I wonder if the ptarmigans will build next year in the
same place as they did last.  Mind when the snow falls you'll take me
for a day's white hare hunting, won't you?  It is such grand sport, and
you promised, you know.  What tune did you say I was to play?  Something
merry.  Oh! yes, I know--"

Kenneth recovered his flute from among the brackens as he spoke, and
rattled off into as merry a reel as ever witches danced to in "Alloway's
auld haunted kirk."

"First-rate!" cried Duncan, clapping his hands, while even Kooran barked
for joy, and Shot's voice gave gladsome echo at the cave's mouth.
"First-rate! man; that's the kind o' music to banish the bogies.  Losh!
Kennie, music like that would have made Methuselah himsel' grow young
again.  That it would."

It was late that evening ere the two friends found themselves down the
glen again, but when they bade each other good-night and walked briskly
homewards there was not a thought in their hearts of evil to come; they
were each as happy as the lark that carols o'er spring corn.

CHAPTER FIVE.

A DAY IN THE WILDS.

  "My heather land, my heather land,
  Though fairer lands there be,
  Thy gowany braes in early days
  Were gowden ways to me."

  Thom.

Scene: The fairy's glen high up among the mountains.  Kenneth seated,
book in hand, on the top of the fairy knoll, which stands out strangely
green against the purples and browns which surround it.  Kenneth is
alone.  Kooran is away down beneath, minding the sheep.  The
shepherd-boy lays down the book at last, or rather he drops it down the
chimney of his cave, and it falls on the carpet of brackens beneath.
Then he takes his crook, and goes slowly down the strath.

This was a Saturday forenoon, and Kenneth and his little friend Archie
McCrane were going on a long round of pleasure.

Ha! yonder comes Archie.  Or rather, yonder suddenly doth he appear.  He
comes straight up out of the centre of a bush of furze, in quite a
startling kind of way.

Archie is eleven years of age, though very tiny, but very strong, and as
hard as an Arab.  No fat about Archie.  His face and bare neck and
breast and thorn-scratched knees are as red as if recently rubbed with
brick-dust.  There isn't a rent or hole in either his jacket or kilt,
but woe is me, it is pretty nearly all patches; it is mother's work
every night to mend the rents Archie makes in his clothes.  Archie is,
of course, his mother's darling.  She even takes pains to make him
pretty.  She prides herself even in his beautiful hair.  His hair is one
of Archie's strong points.  Mind, he wears no bonnet (cap), never did
and never would.  He owns one, but always forgets to put it on.  So his
soft golden hair is cut across above the brows, and hangs in wavy
luxuriance over his shoulders.  I said golden, but it is more straw
colour, and bleached on the top almost white.

He is a singular lad, Archie, has a half-wild, half-frightened look in
his face; in fact, take him all in all, he is quite in keeping with the
romantic surroundings.

"I've got him," Archie said.

"What is it?"

"A little black rabbit."

"Strange," said Kenneth; "put him down.  He must be half tame, I should
think."

Archie put it down, and the two boys knelt beside it among the heather.
It was a half-grown one, so mild, so gentle-looking.  Butter, you would
have said, wouldn't melt in that wee rabbit's mouth.  And it crouched
down low and held its ears flat against its back, and never moved an eye
or winked, but allowed the lads to smooth it with their fore-fingers.

But all at once, pop! it was off like an eel.

"Oh?" said Archie, with such a disappointed look, "and I meant to take
it hame wi' me."

Kenneth laughed, and off the two scampered, as wild as any rabbits.

"Shot is here," said Archie.

"Where?"

"Down with Kooran."

"Then you must whistle him up; Kooran will look after the sheep by
himself, but Shot will lead him into temptation.  Besides, the sheep
don't know Shot.  Whistle, Archie, whistle, man."

Archie put four fingers in his mouth and emitted a scream as shrill as
the scream of the great whaup.  [The curlew.]  In a moment more Shot was
coming tearing along through the heather.

And with him was Kooran.

"What do you want, Kooran?"

Kooran threw himself in a pleading attitude at his master's feet, looked
up with brown, melting, pleading eyes, and wagged his tail.

"Oh!  I know, dear doggie," said Kenneth; "you want your dinner, because
you know we'll be away all day."

Kooran jumped and capered and danced and barked, and Kenneth rolled a
piece of cake and a bit of cheese in a morsel of paper and handed it to
the dog.

"Keep the koorichan," (sheep) "well together, doggie," he said; "and
don't take your dinner for an hour yet."

Kooran gave his tail a few farewell wags and galloped off, but as soon
as he was in sight of the flock and out of sight of his master, he lay
down and ate his dinner right up at once.  He ate the cheese first,
because it smelt so nice, and then he ate the cake.

Away went Archie and Kenneth and Shot.  It didn't take them long to
gallop through the heather and furze.  Of course the furze made their
bare knees bleed, but they did not mind that.

They reached the road in twenty minutes, and went straight away to the
clachan to report themselves at the manse, or minister's house.

It wasn't much of a manse, only an ordinary-looking, blue-slated house
of two stories, but it had a nice lawn in front and gardens round it,
where ash trees, limes, planes, and elms grew almost in too great
abundance.  The windows were large, and one was a French one, and opened
under a verandah on to the lawn.  This was the Rev David Grant's
study.

Before they came round the hedgerow, both boys stopped, dipped their
handkerchiefs in the running brook, and polished their faces; then they
warned Shot to be on his best behaviour, and looking as sedate and
solemn as they could, they opened the gate, and made their way to the
hall door.  And Shot tried to look as old as he could, and followed
behind with his nose pretty near the ground, and his tail almost between
his heels.

But Mr Grant himself saw them, opened the casement window, and cried,--

"Come this way, boys."

Mr Grant was the clergyman of the village.  The living was a poor one,
and as he had seven grown-up daughters, he was obliged to turn sheep
farmer.  It was his sheep that Kenneth herded, and that his father had
herded before him, after "the bad years" had ruined the poor man.

"Miss Grant will soon be here," he said.  "And how have you left the
sheep, Kenneth?"

"They are all nicely, thank you, sir," replied Kenneth.

"All healthy and thriving, I hope?"

"Oh, yes, sir, we won't have any more trouble, and Kooran is minding
them.  He will take capital care of them, sir.  And Duncan McCrane,
Archie's father, is going up himself to see them."

"That's right," said Mr Grant.

The Misses Grant were the mothers of the clachan.  I haven't space to
tell you half of the good they did, so I shall not attempt it, but they
taught in school and Sunday-school, they knew all the deserving poor,
and attended them when sick, and advised them, and prayed with them, and
read to them, and never went empty-handed to see them.  Why, they even
begged for them.  And they knew the undeserving poor, and did good to
them also.  Even Gillespie, the most dreaded poacher and wildest man in
the clachan, was softened in tone and like a child when talking to the
"good Miss Grants," as they were always called.

Well, every one loved these homely sisterly lassies of the parson's.

"By-the-bye, Kennie," said Mr Grant, "I hear the glen is going to be
evicted."

"Surely, sir, that isn't true?" replied Kenneth.

Miss Grant the elder was Kenneth's teacher, one of them, old Nancy
Dobbell was another, and Nature was a third.

"Did you come for a lesson to-day?" said Miss Grant, entering.

"No, thank you.  Miss Grant."

"Well, I'm glad, because I was going out.  Little Miss Redmond is here
with her governess.  They have the pony trap, and I am going to their
glen with them to lunch.  Come to the drawing-room; they are there."

Miss Redmond was the only daughter of an Englishman of wealth, who had
bought land in an adjoining glen.  Mr Redmond himself was seldom at
home--if, indeed, Scotland could be called his home--and his wife was an
invalid.

But there was nothing of the invalid about little Jessie, the daughter.
Quite a child she was, hardly more than eight, but with all the quiet
dignity and easy affability that is only to be found among children of
the _bon ton_.

Archie was simply afraid of her.  Kenneth got on better, however.  He
answered all her innocent but pointed questions, as if he were talking
to his grandmother.  But Jessie was really asking for information, and
Kenneth knew it, so the two had quite a serious old-fashioned
conversation.

Well, Kenneth seemed a gentleman born.  He sat easily in his chair, he
held his cap easily, and behaved himself with polite _sang froid_.  Miss
Grant was proud of Kenneth.

But poor Archie looked ill at ease.

Kenneth told Jessie the story of the little black rabbit, and Jessie was
much interested.

"What did it look like?" she asked.

Kenneth glanced towards Archie.

"He just looked," he answered, "as Archie is looking now, as if waiting
a chance to bolt."

This was a very mischievous speech, but Kenneth could not refrain from
saying what he thought.

"Poor boy?" said Jessie, as if she had been Archie's mother; "he appears
to be very frightened.  What beautiful hair he has!  It is just like
mine."

This was true, only Jesssie's was longer and not bleached.  Kenneth sat
looking half wonderingly at Jessie, longer than politeness would
dictate.

"What are you thinking about?" said Jessie.

"I was thinking," said Kenneth, candidly, "I'd give all the world to be
able to talk English in the pretty way you do."

"Some day," Jessie said to her governess, "we will go and see the sheep,
Miss Gale.  Remember that place.  Put it down in your notes.  We are to
see a fairy knoll and a smugglers' cave.  It will be so delightful."

"We go to London soon for the winter," said Miss Gale, "but will come
and see you, Kenneth, in spring or summer."

"Miss Gale," insisted the imperious Jessie, "I haven't seen you use your
tablets."

So Miss Gale smilingly took her tablets out and noted the engagement to
visit the sheep and see the fairy knoll.

"He has a flute," said Archie, with sudden determination not to sit mute
all the time; "make him play."

And Kenneth had to play, just the same old melodies that the Scotch so
dearly love; but as he played there came so sweet and sad an expression
into English Jessie's face, that Kenneth would have played for hours to
please her.

When he had done, she went and looked at Miss Gale's tablets.

"Thank you," she said, "dear Miss Gale, but just under there write,
`Flute.'"

So the word "Flute" was added.  It was something for the child to think
about while in London, a treat to look forward to, a long summer's day
to be spent among the heather, among the sheep, a fairy glen, a real
fairy knoll, and dreamy music from a flute.

No sooner was Archie round the corner of the hedge and out of sight of
the parson's window, than he gave a wild whoop, like an Apache Indian,
and ran off.

Kenneth came up with him before long.  Not quite up with him, though,
because Archie was high, high up in the sky, at an old magpie's nest.
The magpie was done with it, and Archie was tearing it down.

"The nasty old chick-chicking thing!" he explained to Kenneth; "for two
years running she has used the same old nest, and it wasna hers to begin
wi', but a hoody-craw's."

Away went the boys together.  They had a long day before them, and meant
to make use of it.  They were as happy as boys could be who could do as
they pleased and go where they pleased, and had bread and cheese to eat
when hungry.

Very practical naturalists were Kenneth and Archie.  They knew nothing
whatever of nomenclature, they could not have told you the Latin name of
any of the hundred and one strange wild creatures they met every day in
their wanderings over mountain and moorland, but about the habits of
those creatures there was nothing they could not have told you.

They could have led you to the home of the red deer and moor-cock.  They
knew the tricks and the manners of every bird that built in hedgerow or
furze bush, in thicket of spruce or pine-top or larch, in the hay or the
heather or the growing corn, among sedges by the sides of lonely lochs
or tarns, in banks or holes by the side of the stream, in hillock or
stony cairn, or far up the mountain's side almost at the snow line
itself.

They knew every bird by its name (in Scotch), by its eggs, by its nest,
either in shape or in lining, and they knew where to look for every
nest.

Remember this, and I'm proud to mention it, these boys never destroyed a
nest nor an egg.

They knew all about animals that couldn't fly also, and oh! their name
is legion.  They knew or could pretty well guess, when they came across
any of these, what the particular little animal, whether field-mouse,
squirrel, polecat, or vole, was about, and what it was after, whether
food for the young at home, or a warm bit of moss for extra comfort in
the nest, or twigs, rushes, dry weeds, or hay for building purposes.

There was no deceiving Kenneth or Archie, nor Kooran and Shot, for the
matter of that.  But the wild creatures knew the boys, and often
objected to have their nests examined, and even tried to deceive them.

For example, the hedgehog one evening in the gloaming was caught in the
very act of hauling away an immensely long earthworm.  The hoggie didn't
curl up, but sat down and made pretence to eat it.  But Archie knew the
nest was not far away.

The fox had a home in the middle of the pine wood and had young there,
and do what she would, the old mother fox could not get the puppies to
keep to the hole and lie in bed all day.  They would come out and play
and tumble in the clearing, in such a funny ridiculous way.  Once Archie
was coming up towards this clearing, and the puppies were all out, for
father fox was from home looking after chickens, and as soon as mother
fox carried one into the hole in her mouth and went back for another, it
came laughing and frolicking out again.  So half distracted the mother
went slily to meet Archie, and pretended she was nearly dead, and went
away in a different direction from the clearing, and dragged one leg
behind her in a way that made Archie certain he could catch her.  Of
course when mother fox had Archie far enough away she disappeared.  But
Archie came back next night, and the same trick did not succeed again,
so he found the puppy foxes and used to play with them for hours at a
time in the clearing.

The lapwings have a trick in spring-time of pretending they have a
broken wing when you go near the nest.  They fall down in front of you,
and pretend they can't get away fast, and you run to catch them and
forget all about the nest.  This is a very clever trick, and has
deceived many, but Archie used to shake his yellow hair and laugh at the
lapwing.

"It is too thin," Archie would say.  "I'm not a town's boy."

And he would go straight away and find the nest, with the buff and black
speckled eggs, on the top of the bare sunny hillock where in a hole--not
worth the name of nest--lappie had laid them.

It was too late in the season now to look for birds' nests, but they saw
to-day a lot of old nests that they had not found the summer before, for
the trees were now getting bare and thin in foliage.

When tired roaming about in the wilds, the two boys sat down and had
dinner.

Then they crossed the wide moorland to Nancy's lonely cottage.

Nancy was delighted to see them.  She said they must be hungry.  But the
boys assured her that they were not, because they had had plenty of
bread and cheese.  But Nancy put down her knitting and warmed some
heather ale for them, and sweetened it, and switched two new-laid eggs,
and mixed those in it, and made the boys drink the harmless and
delicious beverage.

Then she took up her knitting again, and click, click, clickety-click,
went the wires the while she told them strange old-world stories and
tales of fairies and kelpies.

The boys were entranced, and it was nearly dark when they left Nancy's
cottage and betook themselves to the glen.  Kooran was very pleased to
see them back, and helped them to fold the sheep; then the whole four--
that is, Kenneth and Archie and Kooran and Shot--went up the fairy glen
to the fairy knoll and the smugglers' cave.

Kenneth lit the lamp; then he lit a fire out of doors and hung over a
pot from a tripod, quite gipsy fashion.

Kenneth was a capital cook, and made a rabbit stew that a king might
have eaten.  So both boys supped royally, and the dogs had the bones.

Then the things were cleared away, and down lay Archie on the dais, to
listen to Kenneth reading the "Tales of the Borders."

On the whole, they had spent a most delightful day of it.  But it was
only one of many, for Saturday was Kenneth's own day, and Archie was his
constant companion.

And so the autumn wore away among these, peaceful glens.  The days grew
shorter and shorter, the frosts fell morning and night, and winds moaned
through trees leafless and bare.  The sheep were folded now in fields on
the lower lands, and Kenneth had more time for his studies.  But every
evening found Archie and him in their cave in the fairy knoll.

CHAPTER SIX.

KENNETH.

Scene: Glen Alva in a winter garb.  A morning in December.  A glorious
morning and yet how great a change from the day before.  For on the west
coast of Scotland changes do come soon and sudden.

Last night, ere gloaming fell, Kenneth had stood at his mother's cottage
door for hours watching the sunset and the weird but splendid
after-glow.

The sun had gone down rosy red and large behind a grey-blue bank of
rock-and-tower clouds that bounded the horizon above the hills.  But so
strange and beautiful was the colour that soon spread over the
firmament, with its tints of lavender, yellow, pink, and pale sea-green,
that even Kenneth's mother must hold up her hands and cry,--

"Oh! dear laddie, a sky like that, I fear, bodes no good to the glen."

For uppermost in every one's mind in Glen Alva, at the present time, was
the threatened eviction.

Then, just one hour afterwards, the pink colour had disappeared from the
sky, and the yellow had changed to one of the reddest, fieriest orange
hues ever eyes had looked upon; while away farther round towards the
north the sky was an ocean of darkest green.  The trees, ashes and elms,
that bordered a field adjoining the kail-yard, stood strangely out
against this glow; every branchlet and twig seemed traced in ink--the
blackest of the black.

Above this orange, or rather through its upper edge, where it went
melting into the zenith's blue, the stars glimmered green.

But looking earthward, all around the hills and fields were dark and
bare, for winter had not yet donned her mantle of snow.

And now Kenneth has come out of doors almost before the sun is risen,
for there are fowls to be fed, and rabbits and guinea-pigs, and the cow
herself to be seen to, before he takes his own breakfast and starts to
meet Dugald to enjoy a day among the hills.

What a change!  The hoar frost has been falling gently all the livelong
night.  The good fairies seem to have been at work while others slept,
changing the world to what he now sees it, and so silently too.  And
this is what strikes Kenneth as so wonderful: while shrub, and tree, and
weeds, and grass, and heather, are transformed, as it were, into
powdered ice, there is neither loss of shape nor form; not a branch
bends down; not a leaf or twig is out of place.  And the very commonest
of objects, too, are turned to marvels of beauty.

The trees point heavenwards with fingers of coral.  But to look lower
down.  Surely there could be no romance or beauty about a cabbage leaf.
Glance at these then fringed all round with needles and spiculae inches
long; the leaf itself is a shimmering green, dusted over with a frosty
down.  The wire-netting around the poultry run, and the cobwebs that
depend from outhouse eaves, are shiny silver lace-work all.  A glorious
morning, a wondrous scene; why, even the humble clothes line is changed
into a white and feathery cable, and the tufts of grass that grow on the
pathways are tufts of grass no longer, but radiant bunches of snow-white
feathers.

Adown the glen, where Kenneth wanders at last, everything around him is
of the same magical beauty, a beauty that is increased tenfold when he
reaches the woods.  Here, too, all is silence, only the murmur of the
rippling stream, or the peevish twitter of birds, or the complaining
notes of a throstle as she flies outwards from a thicket, scattering the
silvery powder all around her.

But down here in the wood, through the dazzling white of the pine trees,
the cypresses, and spruces and holly, comes a shade, a shimmer of green,
brighter among the pines themselves, darker among the ivy that clings to
their stems.  And the seed balls on the ivy itself are globes of
feathery snow, and every spine on the holly leaves is a fairy plume.

Hark! the sound of ringing footsteps on frost-hard road, and a manly
merry voice singing,--

  "Cam' ye by Athol, lad wi' the philibeg,
  Down by the Tummel and banks o' the Garry?
  Saw ye the lad wi' his bonnet and white cockade,
  Leaving his mountains to follow Prince Charlie?"

--And next moment, gun on shoulder, sturdy Dugald the keeper stalks
round the corner.

"The top of the mornin' to ye, man," said Dugald.  "Have you seen
Archie?"

"No, not yet."

But even as they spoke Archie, bare-headed as usual, is seen coming up
from the side of the stream, with a string of beautiful mountain trout
in his hand.

He climbed up through the icy ferns, leapt the fence, and stood before
them.

"I set twenty lines last night," he said, in joyful accents, "and caught
thirteen trout."

Back the trio went to Mrs McAlpine's cottage, and those fish were fried
for breakfast, with nut-brown tea, cream, and butter and cakes; and if
there be anything in this world better for breakfast than mountain trout
fresh from a stream, I trust some kind soul will send me a hamper of it.

What a day of it they had among the hills, to be sure!

Young as he was, Kenneth had a gun, while Archie did duty as ghillie;
they went miles and miles away up among the mountains where the heather
grew high as their waists--Kenneth's waist and Dugald's, I mean; it was
often over Archie's head.  But they came out of this darkness at last,
and shook the snow off their jackets and kilts, and walked on over the
moorland.

Gorcocks stretched their red necks and stared at them in wonder.
Ptarmigans, too cold to fly, ran and hid in the heather, the black cock
and the grey hen often flew past them with a wild whirr-r-r, while far
above, circling round and round in the blue sunny sky, was the bird of
Jove himself.

But it was not the gorcock, nor black cock, nor the ptarmigan, nor the
great golden eagle itself they were after, but the white or mountain
hare.

And the sport was good.  They took time to dine, though, for the air was
bracing and keen; then they shot again till nearly sunset, and Kenneth's
cheek flushed redder than usual as Dugald praised him for his skill as a
marksman.  But at the same time Dugald praised himself indirectly, for
he added, "But no thanks to you, lad; sure, haven't you had Dugald
McCrane himself to teach you this many a long day?"

Archie was wonderfully strong, but he couldn't carry half the hares, so
Dugald and Kenneth had to help him as well as carry their own and their
guns, and even Shot carried a white hare all the way to the glen below.

"Of course," said Kenneth, "you'll come up the glen, Dugald, to our
cottage, and let us show my mother our game; she will be so pleased."

"'Deed, and I will, then," replied Dugald, "and there will be a pair of
hares for the old lady, too, and one for Nancy the witch--goodness be
about us--for the laird wrote me to say if I killed more than a dozen
and a half to-day, I was to do what I liked with the rest."

"Dear old laird!" said Kenneth; "why doesn't he come down from London
and stay among his people?  We all love him so much."

"Ah!  Kennie, he has ruined himself, like mony mair Highland lairds, by
stoppin' in the big city, and it's myself that is sorry.  But see, wha
comes here?"

It was a tall stranger, dressed in knickerbockers, a broad-brimmed soft
felt hat, and a surtout coat, a very ridiculous association of garments.

He carried a gun over his shoulder, and two beautiful Irish setters
walked behind him.  Both dogs were lame.

"Hullo, fellows!" he said.  "Glad I've met some one at last.  How far
have I to walk to the little inn at the klakkin?"

Dugald threw down his game-bag, so did the others their burdens.  No one
was sorry to rest a bit, so they leant against the dyke and quietly
surveyed the stranger.  Meanwhile Shot was standing defiantly in front
of the setters.

Shot wanted to know if either of these dogs would oblige him by
fighting, singly or the two at once.  But they did not seem inclined to
accept the challenge.

"My good fellow," said the stranger, "when you have stared sufficiently
to satisfy you, perhaps you will be good enough to answer my question."

"Well," said Dugald, "I'm staring because it's astonished I am."

"You'd be more astonished if you knew who I am.  But never mind.  I've
been travelling all day among these tiresome hills and only managed to
kill one brown hare.  I was told at the inn that the white hares were in
hundreds."

"Very likely," said Dugald, "but it's no' in the glen you'll find them.

"You're two miles from the clachan," continued Dugald.  "I'm McGregor's
keeper--his chief keeper.  I'll trouble you, sir, to show your permit."

"You're a saucy fellow.  I'm the future owner of these glens and all the
estate, and lord of Castle Alva."

"I'll believe it when I see it.  You're neither lord nor laird yet.
Your permit, please.  I believe nobody since two students poached all
over the hills here and called themselves friends of the laird's."

"As to my permit, fellow, I did not trouble to bring it from C--."

"Then you'll consider yourself my prisoner till you can produce it."

The stranger was a man about forty-five, tall and wiry and haughty.  He
looked at Dugald up and down for a moment.

"Dare you, fellow?" he shouted.

Dugald quietly laid down his gun and threw off his jacket.  He then took
off his scarf, and stretched it out in front of the stranger.  It
measured fully a yard and a half.

"I've tied the hands and feet of a poacher before," he said, "a bigger
man than you.  And I mean to do my duty by you."

"Dugald," said Kenneth, "this gentleman may really be what he says."

"Let him come quietly, then," replied Dugald.  "No stranger that ever
walked will lead Dugald McCrane into trouble again.  Is it going to
surrender you are, sir?  Consider while I count ten.  One--two--three--"

"Enough, enough.  I'm your prisoner, fellow.  It is very ridiculous.
Perhaps you'll live to rue this day.  Come on with me to the inn."

Dugald laughed.

"Not just yet," he answered; "it's the other way; you come with me."

The stranger bit his lip and frowned.

Then he put his hand in his pocket and produced a gold piece.

"This is yours," he said, "if you come at once."

Fire seemed to flash from Dugald's eyes.  He clenched his fists
convulsively, and looked for a moment as if he meant to spring at the
stranger's neck.

"Put up your bawbees," he said at length.  "If Highlanders are poor,
they are also proud, and the gold isn't dug yet that would tempt Dugald
McCrane to neglect his duty.  And if the auld laird himsel' was standing
there, he'd tell you it's the truth I'm speaking.  Right about face, my
man, and march with us to the glen-head, or it may be the worse for
you."

The stranger gave a sigh and a sickly kind of smile, but he shouldered
his gun and prepared to follow.

"One minute," said Dugald, for Kenneth had beckoned him aside.

Kenneth and he conversed for a moment; then Dugald returned.

"You look tired," he said, shortly; "we'll go your road.  Archie," he
continued, "pick the ice-balls from the feet of those twa poor dogs.
Your dogs, sir, are but little used to our Hielan' hills."

"And indeed, my fine fellow," replied the stranger, "am but little used
to your Highland manners, but grateful to you, young sir,"--he was
addressing Kenneth--"for saving me a longer journey than needful."

In half an hour's time the future laird of Alva, for it was no other,
found himself a prisoner at the little inn of the clachan.  This for a
night; next day he produced a letter from McGregor himself--he had
despatched a messenger to C--for it--which quite satisfied Dugald
McCrane.

Dugald was satisfied of something else as well, namely, that he had done
his duty without exceeding it.

Kenneth and Dugald visited Nancy Dobbell's next day and told her the
story.

"Och! och!" she said, "it will be a sore day for the folks of the
clachan, when a stranger steps into the shoes of poor auld Laird
McGregor.

"But a cloud is rising o'er the hills, my laddies; there will be little
more peace in Glen Alva.  A cloud is rising o'er the hills, and that
cloud will burst, and wreck and ruin will fall on the poor people.  My
dreams have told me this many and many a day since.  Heigho! but Nancy's
time is wearin' through.  She'll never live to see it."

Kenneth took the old thin hand that lay in her lap in both his, and
looked into her face, while the tears gathered in his eyes.

He was going to say something.  But he did not dare trust himself to
speak.  He simply petted the poor wrinkled hand.

Is Campbell the poet right, I wonder?

  "_Does_ the sunset of life give us mystical lore?
  _Do_ coming events cast their shadows before?"

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE DEATH OF POOR NANCY.

  "I'm wearin' awa', Jean,
  Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, Jean;
  I'm wearin' awa'
  To the Land o' the Leal."

  Old Song.

Scene: Kenneth at home in his mother's humble cot.  A fire of peats and
wood burning on the low hearth.  Kenneth's mother reading the good Book
with spectacles on her eyes.  Kenneth leading also at the other side of
the fire.  Above the mantelpiece a black iron oil lamp is burning, with
old-fashioned wicks made from peeled and dried rushes.  Between the
pair, his head on his paws, Kooran is lying.  He is asleep, and probably
dreaming of the sheep that he cannot get to enter the "fauld," for he is
emitting little sharp cheeping barks, as dogs often do when they dream.

Kenneth gets up at last and reaches down his plaid and crook.

"Dear laddie," says his mother, "you're surely not going out to-night!"

Kooran jumps up and shakes himself.

"Yes, mother; I must," is the quiet reply.  "I had a strange dream about
poor Nancy last night.  She has been ill, you know, and I haven't called
for three days."

"But in such a night, laddie!  Listen to the wind!  Hear how the snow
and the hail are beating on the window!"

Kenneth did listen.

It was indeed a fearful night.

The wind was sighing and crying through every cranny of the window, and
shaking the sash; it was howling round the chimney, and wailing through
the keyhole of the door.

Snow was sifting in underneath the door, too, and lying along the floor
like a stripe of light.

Kenneth drew his plaid closer round him.

"I must go, mother," he said; "I could not sleep to-night if I didn't.

"Don't be uneasy about me even if I don't return till morning.  I may
stay all night at Dugald's."

When Kenneth opened the door he was almost driven back with the force of
the wind, and almost suffocated with the soft, powdery, drifting snow.
But he closed the door quickly after him and marched boldly on down the
glen, rolling the end of his plaid about his neck, and at times having
even to breathe through a single fold of it to prevent suffocation.

It was now well on in January.  There had been but little snow all the
winter, but this storm came on sharp and sudden.  All day gigantic
masses of cloud had been driving hurriedly over the sky on the wings of
an easterly wind; the ground was as hard as adamant, and towards sunset
the snow had begun to fall.  But it took no time to settle on the bare
ground; it was blown on and heaped wherever there was a bit of shelter
from the fierce east wind.  So it lay under the hedges and dykes, and on
the lee-side of trees, and deep down in the ravines, and under banks and
rocks, and across the road here and there in rifts like frozen waves of
the ocean.

The wind howled terribly across the moorland.  There was a moon, but it
gave little light.

Kooran knew, however, where his master was going, and went feathering on
in front, stopping now and then to turn round and give a little sharp
encouraging bark to his sturdy young master.

Kenneth was all aglow when he reached Nancy's hut, and his face wet and
hot.  His hair and the fringes of the plaid and even his eyebrows were
covered with ice.

He shook the plaid and his bonnet, and folded the former under the porch
for Kooran to lie on.  Then he opened the latch and entered.

All was dark.  Not a blink of fire was on the hearth, and long white
lines across the floor showed him where the snow had been sifting in
through the holes that did duty as windows.  Kenneth's heart suddenly
felt as cold and heavy as lead.

"Nancy," he cried, "Nancy, oh!  Nancy."

There was a feeble answer from the bed in the corner.

He advanced towards it.  There were two shining lights there, the cat's
eyes.  Poor pussy was on the bed watching by her dying mistress.

He felt on the coverlet and found Nancy's hand there.  It was cold,
almost hard.  "Nancy," he said, "it is Kennie, your own boy Kennie;
don't be afraid."

It did not take long for Kenneth to light a roaring fire on the hearth.
As soon as it burned up he held the iron lamp over it to melt the frozen
oil; then he hung it up.  The water in a bucket was frozen, and even
some milk that stood on a little table near Nancy's bed was solid.

The inside of that cot was dreary in the extreme, but Kenneth soon made
it more cheerful.

Poor old Nancy smiled her thanks and held out her hand to her boy, as
she always called Kennie.  He chafed it while he entreated her to tell
him how she felt.

"Happy! happy! happy!" she replied, "but, poor boy, you are shaking."

Kenneth was, and he felt his heart so full that tears would have been a
relief, but he wisely restrained himself.

He melted and warmed the milk, and made her drink some.  Then, at her
own request, he raised her up in the bed.

"Dinna be sorry," she said, "when poor auld Nancy's in the mools.  It is
the gate we have a' to gang.  But oh! dear boy, it's the gate to glory
for poor Nancy.  And so it will be for you, laddie, if you never forget
to pray.  Prayer has been the mainstay and comfort o' my life; God has
always been near me, and He's near me now, and will see me safe through
the dark waters o' death.  Here's a little Bible," she said.  "It was
Nancy's when young.  Keep it for her sake, and oh! never forget to read
it.

"Now, laddie, can you find your way to Dugald's?  Send him here.  There
is an aulder head on his shoulders than on yours, and I have that to say
a man should hear and remember."

"I'll go at once," said Kenneth, "and come back soon, and bring the
doctor too, Nancy.  I won't say good-night, I'll be back so soon."

Kenneth gulped down his tears, patted her hand, and rushed away.

"Come on, Kooran," he cried.  "Oh!  Kooran, let us run; my heart feels
breaking."

He took his way across the moor in a different direction from that in
which he had come.  The storm had abated somewhat.  The wind had gone
down, and the moon shone out now and then from a rift in the clouds.

He determined to take the shortest cut to Dugald's house, though there
would be the stream to ford, and it must be big and swollen.  Never
mind; he would try it.

He soon reached a scattered kind of wood of stunted trees; there was no
pathway through it, but he guided himself by the moon and kept going
downhill.  He would thus strike the river, and keeping on by its banks,
ford wherever he could.

Nothing could be easier.  So he said to himself, and on he went.  It was
very cold; and though the wind was not so fierce, it moaned and sighed
most mournfully through the trees in this wood.  Even Kooran started
sometimes, as a spruce or Scottish fir tree would suddenly free itself
from its burden of snow as if it were a living thing, free itself with a
rushing, crackling sort of sound, and stand forth among its fellows dark
and spectre-like.

Kenneth had gone quite a long way, but still no stream came in sight.
He listened for the sound of running water over and over again, and just
as often he seemed to hear it, and went in that direction, but found it
must be only wind after all.

He grew tired all at once, tired, weak, and faint, and sat down on a
tree stump, and Kooran came and licked his cheek with his soft warm
tongue.  He placed one hand in the dog's mane, as if to steady himself,
for his head began to swim.

"I must go on, though," he muttered to himself.  "Poor old Nancy.  The
doctor.  I'll soon be back--I--"

He said no more for a time.  He had fainted.  When he recovered, he
started at once to his feet.

"I've been asleep," he cried.  "How could I!"  He ate some snow; then he
began to move on automatically, as it were, the dog running in front and
barking.  The dog would have led him home.  "No, no, Kooran," he said;
"the river, doggie, the river."

Kenneth tried to run now.  His teeth were chattering with the cold, but
his face was hot and flushed.

His nerves had become strangely affected.  He started fifty times at
imaginary spectres.  Some one was walking on in front of him--some
shadowy being.  He ran a little; it eluded him.  Then he stopped; he was
sure he saw a head peering at him over a piece of rock.  He called
aloud, "Archie!  Archie!"

His voice sounds strange to his own ears.  He runs towards the rock.
There is no one behind it.  No one.  Nothing.

He feels fear creeping over his heart.  He never felt fear before.

But still he wanders on, muttering to himself, "I'll soon be back.  Poor
old Nancy!  Poor old Nancy!"

All at once--so it seems--he finds himself at the banks of a stream.  He
is bewildered now, completely.  He presses his cold hand against that
burning brow of his.

What is this river or stream?  Where is he going?  Did he cross this
stream before?  He must cross it now, but where is the ford?  How deep
and dark and sullen it looks.

He seats himself on the icy bank to think or try to think.

He is burning, yet he shivers.

Stories of water-kelpies keep crowding through his mind, and the words
and weird music of a song he has heard,--

  "Kelpie dwells in a wondrous hall
      Beneath the shimmering stream;
  His song is the song of the waterfall,
      And his light its rainbow gleam.
                  The rowans stoop,
                  And the long ferns droop
      Their feathery heads in the spray."

And now he jumps to his feet.  He has recollected himself, he was going
for the doctor for poor Nancy, and this is the stream he was looking
for.  He must seek the ford.  He cannot have far to go now.  Once over
the river, and a run will take him to Dugald's cottage.

But stay; what cares he for the ford?  He will plunge into the deepest
pool, and swim across.  He is hot; he is burning; it will cool him.

He walks on a little way, and still the kelpie song runs in his brain.
The trees seem singing it; the wind keeps singing it; the driving clouds
nod to its music.

  "Where the foam flakes are falling,
  Falling, falling, falling,
  Falling for ever and ay--"

Ha! here is a deep dark pool at last.  Why, yonder is the kelpie himself
beckoning to him, and the maiden.

  "When forest depths were dim,
  For love of her long golden hair--"

The poor dog divines his intention.  He rushes betwixt him and the cold
black water, uttering a cry that is almost human in its plaintive
pathos.

Too late.  He laughs wildly, and plunges in.  Then there is a strange
sense of fulness in his head.  Sparks crackle across his eyes.

  "Falling, falling, falling,
  Foam flakes are--"

He remembers no more.

But the brave dog has pulled him to the brink, and sits by his side,
lifting his chin up towards the sky, and howling most pitifully.

Ah! if we only knew how much our faithful dogs love us, and how much
they know in times of trouble and anguish, we would be kinder to them
even than we are, even now, while sorrow smees far away from us.

Presently it appeared to strike even Kooran that giving vent to his
grief would result in nothing very practical, so he suddenly ceased to
whine.  He bent down and licked his master's cold inanimate face.

He howled once again after this, as if his very heart were breaking.

Then he looked all round him.

No help, I suppose, he thought, could come from these cold woods, and no
danger.

So he emitted one little impatient bark, as if his mind were quite made
up as to what he should do, turned tail, and trotted off.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

KENNETH AND JESSIE.

  "Will cannot hinder nor keenness foresee
  What Destiny holds in the darkness for me."

  Tupper.

Scene: Dugald's garden on the cliff top.  You have to climb up to it
from the road that goes winding through a wooded ravine, up a few steep
gravel steps.  It is spring-time, and the soft west wind goes sighing
through the trees.

It is gloomy enough in the ravine below, but here the sun is brightly
shining, and primroses are blooming on the borders, and the blue
myosotis that rivals the noonday sky in the brightness of its colour.

On a wooden dais, near the keeper's door, Kenneth is lying rolled in his
plaid and propped up with pillows.  On the arm of the dais old Nancy's
cat is seated, blinking in the sunshine and singing.  On the pathway is
Kooran, and book in hand--'tis Burns's poems--Archie is seated on a
stone.

Kenneth's mother comes out and stands beside her boy, smiling and
talking for a little, then goes in again.  Dugald himself comes up the
path, gun on shoulder, singing low, but he finishes the line in a louder
voice when he sees Kenneth.

"Ah, lad! out once more," he cries joyfully.  "Och, man! it's myself
that is glad to see you."

The moisture had gathered in the honest fellow's eye.  Kenneth smiled
faintly.

"You'll soon see me on foot again, the doctor says."

"But, man, if I live to be as auld as Methuselah, I'll never forget that
dreary nicht your Kooran came howling to the door.  He would hardly give
me time to put my plaid on, and then he led me away and away to
Brownie's Howe, and I found your body--there seemed no life in it--and
carried you hame here on my shoulder.

"Ay, and Kooran has never left ye one hour since then, nor Nancy's cat
either.  She came here the very day after Nancy's funeral.  Poor auld
Nancy!  How quietly she wore away.  And how sensible she was to the
last.  And she told me a story about the laird, our dear laird McGregor,
that you maunna hear noo, Kenneth.  Good-bye.  I'm off to the hills.
Mind to keep the wind from him, Archie."

"How I should like to go too, Archie," said Kenneth.

"Oh!" said the boy, "that will soon be now.  And oh! how bonnie the
woods are, and the birds have all begun to build."

"Are the woods very bonnie, Archie?"

"Oh! delightful," cried the boy.  "The moss is so soft and green under
the trees.  The wild flowers are creeping out and blowing on the banks.
The pine trees are all stuck over with long white-green fingers."

"I know," said Kenneth.

"The birch tree stems are whiter than ever I saw them, just like silver,
Kennie."

"Yes."

"And their branches are trailing down with the weight of their bonnie
wee glittering leaves."

"Yes, yes."

"Then the needles on the larch trees were never so soft and green
before, I'm sure, and they are just covered with red tassels."

"Yes."

"And the rowan trees [Rowan tree--the mountain ash] are covered with
white flowers.  What lots of scarlet roddans they'll have in autumn!
And the birds are all building, as I said.  I have a hoody-craw's nest
in a Scotch fir in Alva, and a kestrel's in a terribly tall tree at
Aultmore.  That magpie is building a brand-new nest; I knew she'd have
to."

"Well?"

"Well, there are five eggs in a laverock's among the corn, and I know
where there is a ptarmigan's and a whaup's, far away up among the
mountains."

"Oh!  I do so long to be well, Archie."

"And the sheep, Archie?" continued poor Kenneth.  "I've dreamed about
them so often since I've been sick.  I always see them lookin' up,
Archie, with their bonnie brown een" (eyes), "and wonderin' what has
come of me.  And I'm sure Kooran wants to see them."

"Kooran could see them any day, and they're doin' finely, but Kooran
won't leave you."

"Dear me, what shall I do?" cried Archie's mother, running distractedly
up the garden with a bucketful of greens in her hand.  To have seen her
half-scared looks, one would have imagined something terrible was about
to happen.  "Gentry coming, and I'm no' dressed."

The gently arrived about five minutes afterwards, little Jessie, Miss
Gale, and Miss Grant.

As soon as she found herself on the garden path Jessie, who had a bunch
of primroses in her hand, and some long drooping crimson-tipped twigs
from the larch, started to run.  But she paused half-way, and an
expression of sadness stole over her face, as she noticed how wan and
white Kenneth was looking.

She advanced more slowly and tendered the flowers.

"Poor boy!" she said; "are you very, very ill?"

Kenneth took the flowers, and a flush of joy lit his pale cheeks as he
replied,--

"Not now, Miss Jessie.  The doctor says I have nothing to do but get
well."

"Oh, I'm so glad," cried Jessie.

Her governess now came up, and Miss Grant.  The latter had been often
before to see the invalid, but Jessie and Miss Gale had only recently
arrived from Inverness-shire, and were loud in their praises of its
magnificent scenery.  Archie went and brought a chair for Jessie, so
that she could sit while she talked to the invalid boy.  Archie was
improving.  He even spoke to Jessie to-day, and promised to bring her
something very nice if she would accept it.  The something very nice
ultimately proved to be a young hedgehog, so young that its spines had
only just turned hard.

Presently the ladies went into the keeper's cottage.  Archie lay down on
the gravel-path with his head on Kooran's neck, and Jessie sat and
talked to Kenneth.

What was she telling him?  He looked intensely interested.  His eyes
were dilated, his hands clasped, his face flushed.  It was but a simple
story she was telling him, told in simple child's language.  The story
of her own London life, her life in society.  But it was all, all so new
to Kenneth.

Ah! little did innocent Jessie know that her prattle had lighted the
fires of ambition in that boy's soul.  But so it was.  She had
inaugurated a new phase in his existence.  She had inadvertently led him
to see that there were other--can I say better worlds than his?

So Jessie went away, with many a promise to come again when he was
stronger, and could play soft melodies on the flute,--melodies, she
said, that made her feel she wanted to cry, but that she loved all the
same.

Jessie went away.  She had found the boy on this bright lovely spring
morning but a boy; she left him a man at heart.

Archie came and sat by him, and recommenced his tales of mountain and
moorland and forest.  He told him of the fairy knoll and the smugglers'
cave, about the heather, now so green and promising, about early lambs,
and all the little incidents of life in the hills.  Kenneth listened,
but his thoughts were far away.

These glens and wilds, dearly though he loved them, were not all the
world.  The poets and writers that had so charmed him hitherto, and
served to throw a glamour of romance over the beautiful land in which he
lived--Burns, Ossian, Tannahill, Campbell, Scott, and the Ettrick
Shepherd,--they had made him love it, oh! so dearly love it, with that
burning, passionate patriotism which only the heart can feel.

"That beats beneath a Scottish plaid."

But--had he not been living too much in the past? was there not a power
setting in that was threatening to tear Scotland from the hands of the
Scotch?  Ought he to stay among these mountains and dream dreams,
instead of going out into the world beyond to work or fight for the dear
land that gave him birth?  Ought he not to try even to gather wealth for
the sake of those he would leave behind?

Clouds were gathering over the glen.  A foreigner was soon to take
possession of it, with no more love for the soil than if the heather
that grew on every acre of it had not been dyed a hundred times over
with the blood of the hero and the patriot.  Could he stay at home and
see his father's grave, poor old Nancy's too, levelled?

His thin hands covered his face, the boy sobbed quietly, and the tears
trickled through his fingers.

CHAPTER NINE.

THE STORM CLOUD BURSTS OVER THE GLEN.

  "When simmer comes smilin' o'er mountain and lea,
  The green haughs and glens are pleasant to see,
  And pleasant the hum o' the merry wild bee,
  When the rose, when the rose and lily are blawin'.
  An' blithely the mavis salutes the gay morn
  As sweetly he sings on the snawy white thorn,
  While the laverock soars high o'er the lang yellow corn,
  And the moorcocks, the moorcocks are cheerily crawin'."

  Old Song.

Scene: Summer once more on hill and glen.  On the mountain brow, the
heather is bursting into bloom and bee-haunted.  Down in the lower lands
the corn is growing long and green, mingled with orange of marigold and
crimson blush of wild poppy, and the meadows snowed over with gowan and
scented clover.  Fish leap gladly in stream and tarn, the lofty pines
wave their dark plumes in the sunny air, and every wood and copse is
filled with melody.

A right merry party are returning from the rocks by the seashore, where
they have spent hours in wandering and wondering, for they found
something new to admire at every turn.

Jessie is here with her governess and Miss Grant, and Kenneth strong and
well again, to say nothing of Kooran and Shot, and last--probably
least--Archie McCrane.

They have gained the brow of a hill overlooking the wide Atlantic.  Far
beneath them the sea-birds are wheeling and shrieking among the rocks,
while out on the sea's blue breast is many a little white sail, some so
far, far away that though they have three masts, and must therefore be
mighty ships, they seem from here not a bit bigger than a sixpenny
piece.

Little Jessie is looking radiant and lovely, Kenneth gallant and gay,
and everybody else, always including the dogs, as healthy and happy as
the summer's day is long.

Well, no wonder.  They have spent such a gloriously pleasant day.

They took lunch with them to eat at sea.  Yes, at sea, for old Duncan
Reed took them out to the island and far beyond it, and Kenneth was
proud on the whole to exhibit his skill as an oarsman.  And Duncan had
not hesitated to tell the ladies that he--Duncan Reed--had taught the
boy all he knew about boating and fishing too.

The ladies were delighted with Duncan, especially Miss Gale, to whom he
was something quite new.  She must even sketch the little old man
leaning there on his oar in his shirt-sleeves and night-cap, and Duncan
was so delighted when he saw it, that his old eyes sparkled like the
inside of an oyster-shell.

He shared the luncheon, and when they landed they went to his strange
house, with the boat for a roof, and there he made them tea, although
there were not cups for all, and Duncan himself had to drink his out of
a mug.

But there really was more in this little old fisherman than might at
first appear.  Anyhow he astonished Miss Gale by his recitations of
Ossian's poems, both in the ancient Gaelic, and in English.  Even
Jessie, child though she was, experienced a thrill of indefinable
pleasure as she listened to the rise and fall of the measured words, the
magic of the wondrous verse, rolling out from the lips of this little
old man, who looked so wild and weird, and mingling with the dull roar
of the breaking waves.

The child never forgot it.

And now the little party stood on the hill overlooking the sea, and a
walk of two miles took them, after a rest, to the fairy glen.  But
Archie, while they rested, had run on before, for everybody was coming
to the cave, and Archie must see that it was neat and tidy.

There were freshly pulled ferns or brackens laid down as a carpet for
the cave, and seats constructed out of the blooming heather.  While
making these Kenneth was thinking all the time about Jessie, and about
how her eyes would sparkle when she saw these.

As they walked on over the hills, Kenneth by golden-haired Jessie's
side, the sky above them blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon
looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among
the pinky heath, Kenneth got his child-companion to talk and tell him
more about the great world, that mighty ocean of life that lay in the
far beyond, the ceaseless throb of whose billows was hardly ever heard
among those peaceful hills.

The boy stopped and looked backwards and away out towards the sea.
Probably he never looked half so handsome as he did now, with his heart
filled with manly resolves, with the light of a half-kindled ambition
making his face to shine.

"I'm very, very happy here, Miss Jessie," he said.  "I may never, never
be so happy as I am now, as I have been to-day.  But before long I mean
to leave this country, leave Scotland, and go away into the world, Miss
Jessie."

The child looked at him half afraid.

"Yes, I'm foolish, I suppose, but I cannot help it; go I must.  I
daresay I have read too many books, but--I long to go.

"I'm going to take Nancy's Bible with me," he said, smiling and looking
half ashamed.  "I'll never part with that."

"Let me see it," said Jessie.

He took from his bosom a little old-fashioned Bible, with the Psalms of
David--those heavenly gems of poetry and song--in metre at the end of
the book, and placed it in the child's hand.

"You are a very good boy," she said, for the child felt she must say
something.

"But oh!" she added, "here is a pressed primrose in the book."

"It is one of those you gathered for me; don't you remember?"

"Oh! yes," she replied, smiling, "but it looks so lonely; here, place
this little tiny bit of heather beside it."

It was an innocent child-like action to place the bit of heather bloom
there with the primrose, but one that Kenneth never forgot.

Archie was indeed a proud boy when Jessie and Miss Gale fell into
raptures over the cave.  Everything was admired, the heather seats, the
rustic sofa, the rude bookcase containing the authors the boys read
almost every day, and even the carpet of brackens.

"Did you get them?" said Kenneth in a stage whisper to Archie.

"Yes," replied Archie, with eyes as big as two-shilling pieces, "and
such a fine lot they are.  And the cream.  Yes, and plates and spoons
and all."

To the astonishment of his guests, Kenneth now placed a table in the
centre of the cave, and bade them all sit down.  Then from a dark recess
he excavated a huge dish of mountain strawberries [Rubus chamaemorus], a
jar of cream, and plates and spoons.  Neither Jessie nor Miss Gale had
ever eaten anything so delicious before.

"But what are they, Kenneth?" she said.

"They are called cloud-berries," replied Kenneth; "they only grow far up
in the mountain tops, and some call them fairy food.  People about here
say that these berries creep in under their leaves, and hide when any
one with a baneful eye looks at them, and that only good people can
gather them."

"And who gathered these?" said Miss Gale.

"Archie."

"Oh!  Archie, you are good."

Archie felt prouder even than before.

But after the cloud-berries were discussed, wee Jessie, sitting there on
her heather couch, said, with a half-arch smile,--

"There is something else.  Look at your tablets, Miss Gale."

"Oh yes," said Miss Gale.  "Here it is--Flute."

Kenneth had the flute in his pocket.  He was a marvellous player for a
boy.  His whole soul seemed to breathe through the instrument.

To-day he played a battle-piece of his own putting together--not
composing.

First came the gathering of the clans, bold, energetic, soul-touching,
then the plaintive farewell to native glens, as the Highlanders marched
away,--

  "Maybe to return to Lochaber no more."

Next came the spirited march, then the wilder pibroch as the foe was
sighted, then wilder rushing music still; the fight was going on now,
you could feel that.  You could hear the shrill slogan of the Highlander
mingling with shout of victor and shriek of wounded.  Then a pause, and
anon the coronach or wail for the dead.

And so the music died away.

Down the glen now the party went, for the sun was sinking low in the
west, and the fairy glen was miles from the clachan.

But Jessie must see the sheep.  Dugald was acting as shepherd to-day,
and doffed his Highland bonnet as the ladies approached him.

There was not a sheep there that Kenneth did not know.  They bleated a
kindly welcome as he approached.  They even played with Kooran, making
great pretence to knock him down or to hit him with their hard feet, all
of which Kooran took in good part, and kindly pretended to run from
them, then turning and barking in a funny remonstrative voice, as if he
really were laughing at heart, and enjoyed the fun immensely, and I have
no doubt he did.

Dugald took Kenneth aside.

"There is bad news come," he said; "all is lost.  The glen is to be
evicted."

Kenneth's heart sank within him.

The cloud then that had been gathering so long was about to burst.

It was well-nigh a year since the tenantry had been asked to leave.
They heeded not the summons.  They could not believe that their own auld
laird McGregor would send his people away.  Little they knew.  McGregor
would never appear among them again.  The edict sent through him was
sent by or at the instigation of the new American laird.  The glens were
no good to him with people in them--so he said--he must have deer; he
was buying the land for the "sport" it would afford him, his family and
friends.  Yet he doubted his own power, being a foreigner, to evict.

But that very day the last summons was given previous to forcible
expulsion.

And the young men of the clachan and glens were wild.  They would stand
by their homesteads, they would grasp dirk and claymore, they would
fight, they would die where they stood.

But at the great meeting that took place the wisdom of the grey-haired
prevailed.  And with sorrow, ay, and tears, they all came at last to the
conclusion that resistance would be worse than useless.

They would not go till they were forced, they would stay and see the
last of the dear old spot, but they would bend their necks to the yoke,
they would maintain a passive attitude.

In this they showed their wisdom.  The auld laird McGregor sent them a
most affecting letter.  "Their sorrows," it ended, "and his own
misfortune had broken his heart, and though he could see them no more in
life, his thoughts and mind were with them."

True, for the auld laird lived scarcely a year after the eviction of
Glen Alva.

But with a portion of the remains of his fortune he paid the passage
money to America of as many of his tenants as were willing to accept his
offer.

I would not harrow the feelings of my readers by describing the last sad
scene in Glen Alva, when in the darkness of night the people were turned
out; when more than seventy houses--well, call them huts, they were
homesteads, at all events--were given to the flames; when the aged and
the sick were laid on the bare hillside to shiver and to die; and when
neither the wail of the widow nor plaintive cry of the suffering infant
could move to pity or mercy the minions of the Yankee laird, who
preferred deer to human beings.

Selah!

CHAPTER TEN.

THE LAST LINK IS BROKEN.

  "Farewell, farewell, my native land,
  Thy lonely glens and heath-clad mountains."

Scene: The fairy glen once more, and in the background the fairy knoll.
Kenneth and Archie, both looking very sad, are in the foreground by a
new-made grave.  Kenneth has been planting a little tree there, only a
young Scotch pine, dug from the moor, a treelet that had grown from a
cone which the rooks had fetched from Alva's gloomy forest.  Kenneth has
planted the tree, and the spade has dropped from his fingers and fallen
among the heather.

Archie's dog Shot is standing near.  He has been watching all the
proceedings.  Watching, and probably wondering.  For dogs _do_ think.

But where is Kooran?  Kooran is under the sod.  His bonnie brown eyes
have closed for ever; his faithful heart will never feel love or
friendship more--it has ceased to beat.  Nor cry of wild bird on the
mountain, nor plaintive bleat of lamb, no, nor his master's voice, will
ever move him again.

"I canna but believe," says Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, "that dogs hae
sowls."

There are many more believe with you, dear Hogg.

But about honest Kooran.  When dogs get old, you know--and Kooran had
got old before he died--a slight stiffness may be noticed in their gait.
I am positive that they begin to wonder what ails them.  Wonder why
they cannot run so fast as they used to, in the good days of yore.
Wonder why they get tired and out of breath so soon.  Wonder, too, why
master speaks so low, or why the sheep do not bleat so loudly or the
birds sing so much as they used to.  They do not know that this is only
failure in their own powers of hearing.  And they wonder also why the
trees and grass and hedgerows have ceased to be so bright and green,
even in spring-time, as once they were; why master's face seems dimmer.
They cannot now stand the cold so well; they seem to want a thicker
coat, but alas! the coat grows thinner.  They would fain seek the
shelter of indoors, even curl up on the hearthrug.  How seldom do they
get the chance!  How often they receive the brutal kick when they most
need comfort!

Then comes the day when they feel the cold no longer.

It had never occurred to Kenneth that some time or other Kooran and he
must part--that Kooran must die.  He was ever kind and attentive to this
faithful friend of his; he never forgot him.  He might have been excused
if he had, for the scenes at the eviction and the burning of the glen
were awful enough, in all conscience, to have driven everything else out
of the boy's head.

Of all the houses in the glen, that alone of Kenneth's mother had been
spared.  Not that she meant to accept the favour thus offered her and
stay on.  Both she and Kenneth were far too proud for that.  But at the
cottage they lived for a time.  And at the cottage Kooran died.

He came wet and weary one evening and threw himself down at his master's
feet.

When Kenneth spoke to him he looked pleadingly up into his face and
shivered.  Kenneth had never seen him shiver before.  The dog went and
lay before the fire, and his master covered him up with his plaid.
Kooran licked his hands.

Something, he knew not what, awoke the boy long before dawn next day,
and his first thought was of his old favourite.

He peeped out at the little gable window in the garret where he lay.  A
pale scimitar moon was declining behind the trees.  These looked black
and spectre-like.

Kenneth went gently down the ladder, and lit the oil lamp.  The fire was
very low, and he replenished it.  Then he gently lifted a corner of the
plaid.  The action aroused the dog, and he crawled forth.  He seemed to
feel for Kenneth's knee, and on this he laid his head.

Kenneth knew this was death.  He put his hand tenderly on the poor dog's
muzzle, for he could not hear him breathe.

The tongue came out to lick the hand.  It was a farewell.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

And the boys had rolled the body of poor Kooran in a piece of old tartan
plaid, and, followed by Shot, carried him up to the fairy glen, and
buried him near the fairy knoll.  Remember they were only boys.

Then Kenneth sat down and cried.  Archie had never before seen such an
exhibition of weakness on the part of his friend, so what could he do
but sit down and keep him company?  They were only boys.

Shot looked very sad.  He did not know what to make of it all.  He
whined impatiently.  Then he licked Archie's wet face and touched
Kenneth under the arm with his nose, as some dogs have a way of doing.

"Poor Shot!" said Kenneth.  "You too have lost a faithful friend."

Together, after this, they took their way down the hill.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

A short, crisp, and gentlemanly letter came to Kenneth two days after
this.  It was from Jessie's father.

"My daughter has spoken much about you," said this epistle, "and quite
induced me to take an interest in your welfare.  The situation of
under-ghillie at my Highland shooting-box is vacant.  I have much
pleasure in placing it at your disposal.  You will be good enough
therefore to enter on your duties on Monday next, etc, etc."

Kenneth's cheek burned like a glowing peat.  He tore the letter in
fragments, and threw them in the fire.

"Mother," he cried, "dear mother, it needed but this!  I shall leave the
glen.  I go to seek our fortune--your fortune, mother, and my own.  I
shall return in a few years as wealthy mayhap as the proud Saxon who now
offers me the position of under-ghillie.  Mother, it is best I should
go."

I pass over the parting between the mother and her boy.

With his flute in his pocket, with no other wealth except a few
shillings and his Bible, Kenneth McAlpine turned his back on the glen,
and went away out into the wide, wide world to seek his fortune.

For years, if not for ever, he bade farewell to his Highland home and
all he held so dear.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

End of Book First.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

FOR AULD LANG SYNE.

  "We twa have paddled in the burn
  Frae mornin' sun till dine.
  But seas between us broad hae rolled
  Since the days o' auld lang syne."

  Burns.

Scene: Landscape, seascape, and cloudscape.

A more lovely view than that which met the eye of a stranger, who had
seated himself on Cotago Cliff this evening, it was never surely the lot
of mortal man to behold.  It was on the northern shores of South
America, and many miles to the eastward of Venezuela Gulf.

Far down beneath him lay the white villas and flat-roofed houses of a
town embosomed in foliage, which looked unnaturally green against their
snowy walls.  To the right, and more immediately below the spot where
the stranger sat under the shade of trees, that towered far up into the
sky, was a long, low, solitary-looking beach, with the waves breaking on
it with a soft musical sighing sound; it was as if the great ocean were
sinking to slumber, and this was the sound of his breathing.

The sun was low down in the west, in a purple haze, which his beams
could hardly pierce, but all above was a glory which is indescribable,
the larger clouds silver-edged, the smaller clouds encircled with
radiant golden light, with higher up flakes and streaks of crimson.  And
all this beauty of colouring was reflected from the sea itself, and gave
a tinge even to the wavelets that rippled on the silver sands.

It was very quiet and still up here where the stranger sat.  The birds
had already sought shelter for the night; well they knew that the sunset
would be followed by speedy darkness.  Sometimes there would be a rustle
among the foliage, which the stranger heeded not.  He knew it was but
some gigantic and harmless lizard, looking for its prey.

"I must be going back to my hotel," he said to himself at last.  He
talked half aloud; there was no human ear to listen.

"I must be going home, but what a pity to leave so charming a place!  I
do not know which to admire the most, the grand towering tree-clad
hills, the sea, or the forest around me.

"Hullo!" he added, "yonder round the point comes a little skiff.  How
quickly and well he rows!  He must be a Britisher.  No arms of lazy
South American ever impelled a boat as he does his.  Going to the hotel,
I suppose.  No, he seems coming straight to the beach beneath me.  Hark!
a song."

The rower had drawn in his oars, leaving the little boat to continue its
course with the "way" already on her, while he gazed about him.  Then,
as if impelled to sing by the beauty around him, he trilled forth a
verse of a grand old sea song.

  "The morn was fair, the sky was clear,
      No breath came o'er the sea,
  When Mary left her Highland cot
      And wandered forth with me.
  Though flowers bedecked the mountain side,
      And fragrance filled the vale,
  By far the sweetest flower there
      Was the Rose of Allendale."

Then there was silence once again.  The rower rowed more slowly now, but
soon he beached his boat, and drew it up, and hid it by drawing it in
among the rocks.

The stranger soon afterwards rose to go.

He had not proceeded many yards along the hillside, when, on rounding a
gigantic cactus bush, and close beside it, he stood face to face with
the oarsman.

The former lifted his hat to bow, but instead of replacing it on his
head he dashed it on the ground, and springing forward, seized the other
by the hand.

"Archie!  Archie McCrane!" he cried; "is it possible you do not know me,
that you have forgotten Kenneth McAlpine?"

Poor Archie! for a moment or two he could not speak.

"Man!" he said at last, in deep, musical Doric; "is it possible it is
you, Kennie?"

The tears were blinding him, both hearts were full, and they said no
more for many seconds, merely standing there under the cactus tree
holding each other's hands.

"God has heard my prayer," said Kenneth at last.

"And mine.

"But how you have altered, Kenneth!  How you must have suffered to make
you look so old!"

"You forget I _am_ old, twenty-one next birthday; and you are only a
year less.  But what wind blew _you_ here?  I thought, Archie, you had
settled down as an engineer on shore."

"Your letters roused a roving spirit in me, Kenneth.  I determined to
see the world.  I took the first appointment I could get.  On a
Frenchman.  I haven't had much luck.  We have been wrecked at Domingo,
and I came here last night in a boat.  But come, tell us your own
adventures.  I have all your letters by heart, but I must hear more; I
must hear everything from your own mouth, my dear brown old man."

Kenneth _was_ brown; there was no mistake about that, very brown, and
very tall and manly-looking, and the moustache he wore set off his
beauty very much.  No, he had not cultivated his moustache.  It had
cultivated itself.

"Come down to the hotel," said Archie.  "I am not poor.  We saved
everything.  It was a most unromantic shipwreck."

"No," replied Kenneth, "not to the hotel to-night.  Come up the mountain
with me to my cottage."

"Up the mountain?"

"Yes, my lad," said Kenneth, smiling.  "Up the mountain.  Haven't
forgotten how to climb a hill, have you, I say, Archie, boy? for, as
brown as I look, I am an invalid."

"What!" cried Archie, in some alarm.  "Nothing serious, I sincerely
hope."

"Nothing, old man, nothing.  But when they left me here six weeks ago, I
thought that no power could have saved me.  I had yellow-Jack.  That's
all.  I could not have lived in the hotel.  Good as it is, it is too
low.  But come; old Senor Gasco waits supper for me."

Up and up they struggled, arm in arm.  Kenneth knew every foot of the
pathway through the forest; it was well he did, for night had quite
fallen over sea and land, and the stars were glinting above them ere
they reached a kind of tableland, and presently stood in front of the
rose-covered verandah of a beautiful cottage.

The French windows were open, and they entered _sans ceremonie_.  It was
a lofty, large room, furnished with almost Oriental splendour, with
brackets, ottomans, and suspended lamps, that shed a soft light over
everything around.

And here were books, and even musical instruments _galore_, among the
latter a flute.  It was not the flute Kenneth used to play in Glen Alva,
and up among the mountains, while herding his sheep; it was a far better
one, but the sight of it brought back old times to Archie's memory.

Kenneth had left him for a few minutes.

Archie sank down upon an ottoman with the flute in his hand, and when
Kenneth returned he found his friend in dreamland apparently.

But with a sigh Archie arose and followed Kenneth to an inner room.

"Senor Gasco," said the latter, "this is Archie McCrane, the friend of
my boyhood, of whom you have so often heard me speak.

"Archie, this gentleman has saved my life.  He is a kind of a hermit.
Aren't you, _mon ami_?"

"No, no, no," cried Senor Gasco, laughing.  "Only I love pure, fresh,
cool air and quiet; I cannot get these in the town beneath, so I live
here among my books."

He was a tall, gentlemanly-looking Spaniard, of some forty years or
over, and spoke beautiful English, though with a slightly foreign
intonation.

A supper was spread here that a king might have sat down and enjoyed.

Two tall black servants, dressed in snow-white linen, waited at the
table.  They were exceedingly polite, but they had rather larger mouths
and considerably thicker lips than suited Archie's notions of beauty.

Out into the verandah again after supper, seated in rocking-chairs; the
cool mountain air, so delicious and refreshing, was laden with the
perfume wafted from a thousand flowers.  There were the stars up in
heaven's blue, and myriad stars, the fire-flies, that danced everywhere
among the trees and bushes.  Archie said they put him in mind of dead
candles.

"And now for your story, Kenneth."

"It is a long one, but I must make it very brief.  You know most of it,
dear Archie, so why should I repeat it?"

"Because," said Archie, "I do _so_ love to hear you speak.  Your voice
is not changed if your face is, and when I sit here in this
semi-darkness, and listen to you, man, I think we are both bits of boys
again, wandering through the bonnie blooming heather that clothes the
hills above Glen Alva."

"Now you have done it," cried Kenneth, laughing.

"Done what?" said Archie.

"Why, _you_ have to tell the first story.  If you hadn't mentioned home,
if you hadn't spoken about the hills and the heather, I would have told
my tale first."

"But--" said Archie.

"Not a single excuse, my boy.  I am home-sick now.  Answer a few
questions, and I'll let you off."

"Well, go on," said Archie; "ask away."

"My dear, dear mother!  Have you seen her grave lately?"

"It was the last spot I visited when I went to the clachan," replied
Archie sadly.

"Heigho!" sighed Kenneth.  "And I was all ready to go home.  We were
lying at the Cape, if you remember, when your letter arrived.  Yes, and
I left my ship, I threw up a good appointment on receipt of the sad
intelligence; and Archie, dear lad, I shall go back to Scotland when I
make my fortune--not before, and that may be never."

"Do not speak like that."

"But I must and will.  How changed everything must be from the time I
kept the sheep among the hills.  And how do the clachan, the glen, and
the hills look now?"

"The clachan is but little changed.  Mr Steve did not tear down the
village and church, as he first threatened.  No, the clachan is the
same, but poor Mr Grant has gone."

"Dead!  You did not tell me this in your letter."

"No, no, not dead.  He has got a better living in the city."

"Yes?"

"Yes, and I went to see them.  The Misses Grant keep every letter ever
you wrote them, and they do long, I can tell you, for the return of the
wanderer."

"Bless their dear hearts!"

"I went over to the wee village by the sea and saw Duncan Reed."

"Is he changed?"

"Not in the very least.  Looks hardier than ever."

"And your father and mother you have already said are well?"

"Yes, but father doesn't like town life.  How he would love the old days
to come back again; how he would love to rove once again over the hills
gun on shoulder and dog at his heel!"

"He is not very old; he may yet have his wish."

"I fear not."

"Well?"

"Well, the glens and hills all around are planted with trees.  This was
done as soon as Mr Steve took possession of the estate, and before poor
old Chief McGregor died."

"He is dead, then?"

"Yes.  I would have told you, but I wanted to make my letters to you as
bright as possible."

"So the dear old man is dead.  Heigho!  And the estate planted.  You did
not even tell me that."

"No, and for the same reason.  But the trees are getting quite tall
already.  Most of the higher parts of the glens are covered with Scotch
firs and spruces and larches, the lower lands with elm and plane and
scrubby oaks.  At the risk of being taken as a trespasser, I went all
over the estate.  I penetrated up to the fairy knoll and saw poor
Kooran's grave.  There are young trees all round there now."

"Archie," said Kenneth, leaning forward and peering into his companion's
face, "I hope they didn't interfere with poor Kooran's grave."

"No, nor with anything around it."

"Go on, lad; I'm so pleased."

"Well, I've little more to say.  I was not taken prisoner, though I
startled the wild deer in all directions."

"But the grand old hills themselves?"

"Nay, they are not planted.  Green in summer and purple and crimson in
autumn, there they are the same, and ever will remain."

There was a pause.  Then Kenneth spoke once again.

"Did you ever see Miss Gale since?"

"Only once," replied Archie, "and Miss Redmond--Jessie--she has grown
tall, and oh!  Kenneth, so beautiful, but still so child-like and
graceful."

"I can easily believe that, boy.  And did she--"

"Yes, dear lad," said Archie.  "She did ask all about you, so kindly.
And I gave her your last letter to read.  And--"

"And she read it, Archie?  Tell me, did she read it?"

"Yes, she read it over and over again."

"Now, I'll tell you my own adventures."

"Begin at the beginning, won't you?  The very beginning, from the day
you and I parted."

"I will."

But what Kenneth said deserves a chapter to its own account.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

KENNETH AND ARCHIE.

  "Adieu, adieu; my native land
  Fades o'er the waters blue;
  The night-winds sigh, the breakers roar,
  And shrieks the wild sea-mew.
  Yon sun that sets upon the sea
  We follow in his flight;
  Farewell awhile to him and thee,
  My native land, good-night."

  Byron.

Scene: Kenneth and Archie still seated in the verandah of the Spaniard's
cottage.  The light from the casement window is streaming outwards
through the creepers and climbing plants all around them; the beautiful
bell-like flowers, down-drooping, touch their very faces.  But all the
colour up there in the verandah's roof does not belong to these flowers.
No, for birds are sheltering their bright wings from the night dews;
that rich orange spot in the corner is a bird, so is that patch of
crimson and steel, and yonder one of snow-white and blue.  If you looked
steadily for a moment at them, you could see round heads turned
downwards and wondering beads of eyes.  The birds are considering
whether or not all is safe, or whether they had better fly away out into
the night and the darkness.

Kenneth is waiting for the Senor to come.  There is hardly a sound
except a gentle sighing of wind among the trees, now and then the shriek
of a night bird, the constant chirp of cicada, or rap, rap, rap, of
green lizard as he beats to death some unhappy moth he has captured.

"Now, Senor, come and sit you down.  Light your great pipe.  That is
right.  Thanks, yes, both Archie and I will have a little palm-leaf
cigarette.  Coffee?  Oh! delightful!  Archie: old man, there isn't any
one in all the wide world ever made coffee half so well as the Senor
Gasco.  Flattery, Senor?  No, not a bit of it.  The truth cannot be
flattery."

"The coffee," said Archie, "is delicious."

"Heigho!" sighed Kenneth.  "I am so happy to-night, dear Archie.  I
believe it will really do me good to tell you of some of the troubles I
have come through; it will dilute my joy.

"I don't know, Archie, old man, how ever I became a sailor.  I'm not
quite sure, mind you, that I am altogether a sailor yet at heart, though
I dearly love the sea, and a roving life is _the_ life for a man of my
temperament.  Senor is smiling; he will never admit I am a man.  But I
have come through _so_ much, and the years I have spent since I left the
dear old glen have been indeed eventful, and seem a long, long time.

"But, Archie, lad, when I began my wanderings through the world, I can
tell you my ambition was very great indeed.  I determined, you know, to
make my fortune, and I determined to make it in a very short time.  The
details of the process of fortune-manufacture, however, didn't present
themselves to me, all at once anyhow.  I turned my back on Glen Alva,
and so full was my heart that I put at least ten miles behind me before
I sat down to rest.  I got inside a wood at last, and seated myself
beneath a tree, and counted my money, three shillings and
fivepence-halfpenny!  Well, many a man has begun the world on less.

"But this money couldn't last long.  What then should I do?  I'll tell
you what I did do.  I fell sound asleep, and the sun was setting when I
awoke, and flooding all the wood with mellow light.

"There was a blackbird came and perched half-way up a neighbouring
spruce tree and began fluting.

"`Oh!'  I said half aloud, `two of us can flute.'

"So the blackbird and I piped away there till it got nearly dark.  But I
felt hungry now, and music is not very filling, Archie.  So I put up my
flute and started to my feet; I felt stiff now, but it soon wore off.

"I went on and on and on, getting hungrier every minute, but there was
no sign of village or house.  I drank some water from a rill that came
tumbling down through a bank of ferns, and felt better.

"I was beginning to wonder where I should sleep, when the sound of merry
laughing voices fell upon my ear.  The party, whoever it was, came
rapidly on towards me from among the trees.

"`Hullo, lad!' said one; `are ye comin' to the dance?'

"`Dance!'  I cried; `why, my feet are all one bag of blisters, and I'm
faint with hunger.  Dance, indeed!'

"`It's a puir beggar laddie,' said a girl, whose face I could hardly see
in the uncertain light.

"`Beggar!'  I exclaimed.  `Who d'ye call a beggar?  I've a whole
pocketful of money, only I've lost the road.'

"`Come along, then,' they all cried.  `Come along with us.'

"And off we all went singing.  We struck off the road down across the
fields, and soon I heard the music of a fiddle and saw bright lights.  A
young man came out of a farmhouse to welcome us.  He told us dolefully
that only one fiddler had come, and plaintively asked what could be
done.

"`I've a flute,' I cried.

"`Hurrah!' they answered.  `Come in, my boy.'

"`The laddie maun eat first,' said the girl who had called me a beggar.

"I blessed her with all my heart, though not in words.

"What a supper they gave me!  And didn't I eat just!  I could play now,
and we spent such a joyful night, and dawn was breaking and the
blackbirds up and fluting again long before the merry party broke up.

"I got a bed and slept far into the day; then, after a good dinner from
these kind-hearted farm folks, I began my journey in search of fortune
once more.

"By evening I saw great grey clouds lying in the hollows before me.  It
was smoke.  I was nearing Glasgow, and in two hours more I was walking
along the Broomielaw.

"I had never seen so many people before in my life, but hardly anybody
looked at the shepherd lad in Highland garb.  I determined they should,
though.  I put my flute together, and standing near the bridge,
commenced to play `The Flowers of the Forest.'

"Was it the singular plaintiveness of this beautiful air, I wonder, or
was it that my thoughts were away back again in the glen I had left, and
with those I loved so dearly?  I do not know, but I seemed to become
oblivious to everything.  My very soul was breathed into the music; I
was speaking and appealing to the crowd through the instrument.

"The crowd!  Yes, there was a crowd.  I became aware of that as soon as
I had finished, and money, piece after piece, was forced into my hand.
I took the money.  I felt ashamed of it next moment, but to have gone
off then would have seemed ungrateful.  I played still another air.
Again I paused.

"`No more money,' I cried aloud as I fled away.

"They must have thought the Highland boy was mad.

"Some time afterwards I found myself standing at a book-seller's window
looking at a picture, a ship, a gallant ship in a gale of wind.

"How I longed to be at sea then!  How I hated the bustle and stir and
talking and noise all round me!  That splendid ship--the sea was wild
and rough all around her, the spray dashing over her bows; there would
be the roar of the wind through rigging and shroud, and the wild scream
of sea bird rising high over the dash of the waves.  She bore it well;
the sheets were taut; the sails were rounded out and full.  How I longed
to be at sea!

"A hand was laid on my shoulder.  I started and looked up.  No need to
start.

"A kindly face looked down into mine.

"`You are in grief of some kind, my boy,' he said, this white-haired old
gentleman.  `Nay, don't be too proud to admit it.  Pride has been the
downfall of the Highland race.'

"`If you please, sir,' I replied, boldly enough now, `the Highlanders
are not a downfallen race.'

"`I did not mean it in that way,' he said, smiling at my vehemence.
`But come with me, boy; I know we will be friendly.'

"Where he took me, or what he said to me, I need not tell you.

"Suffice it to say that next day we left Scotland and journeyed south by
rail, and I wept--yes, I do not now think it shame to say so, though I
struggled then to hide my tears--I wept to cross the border.

"`It will be such a pleasant change for you, my dear boy,' said good old
Major Walton--for that was the gentleman's name, and he had quite taken
to me after hearing all my story--`a delightful change indeed after your
own bleak, cold, wild hills.  We have a very pretty home in Hampshire.
You'll soon forget you were ever anywhere else.'

"The Major's home was indeed a very nice one; close to the borders of
the New Forest it was, and not a great way from the sea.

"But ah!  Archie, lad, everything was very foreign to me; the very trees
looked strange and uncouth, especially the docked pollards, that stood
by the banks of the sluggish streams.  The style of the houses was
strange to me, and the lingo and talk of the people, who, in my opinion,
were terribly ignorant.

"The Major was kindness itself, and so were his wife, her sister, and
two children.  The major had but one hobby--music.  He played the violin
himself, and he told me honestly that his chief reason for `taking me'--
these are his very words--was because I played with such feeling.

"My evenings were happy enough in this English home of mine; my days I
spent in the garden, where I was allowed to work, or in the great
forest.  You must not imagine, Archie, the New Forest is anything like a
deer forest in our own land.  There are in it no wild mountains, no deep
dark dells, no beetling crags and cliffs, no cataracts, no foaming
torrents; the red deer does not toss his wide antlers here and fly
proudly away at your approach, nor far above you in the sky do you see
the bird of Jove circling upwards round the sun.

"Wilson would never have said about the New Forest,--

  "`What lovely magnificence stretches around!
  Each sight how sublime, how awful each sound;
  All hushed and serene, like a region of dreams,
  The mountains repose 'mid the roar of the streams.'

"But many a long day I spent roaming about in this forest, nevertheless.

"I was charmed with the solitary grandeur of the place.  I had no idea
it was so extensive either, or so varied in its beauties.  Why, here one
might wander about for weeks and never weary, for he would always be
coming to something new.  Is this the reason, I wonder, that it is
called the _New_ Forest?  New in point of time it certainly cannot be
termed, for everything in it and about it is old, extremely old.  The
oaks are gnarled and wrinkled, and grey with age; its elms and its ash
trees, its limes and its alders, are bent and distorted by the touch of
time, and the lichens that cling to their stems only add to their
general appearance a look of hoariness that is far from unpleasing to
the eye.

"Then the heather which covers the large sweeps of moorland that you see
here and there is very sturdy and strong, while from the furze or whins
boats' masts could be made.

"The creatures, too, that one sees while walking through this forest,
seem birds and beasts of some bygone time, and look as if they hardly,
if ever, saw a human being from one year's end to the other.

"The hares or rabbits, instead of scurrying away at your approach, sit
leisurely on one end while they wash their faces and study you.  The
blackbirds and the mavises hardly trouble themselves to cease their song
even when you walk close by the trees on which they are perched.  The
great beetles and other members of the coleoptera tribe are far too busy
to take the slightest notice of your presence, and the great velvety
bees go on working and humming just as if there were no such creature as
you within a thousand miles of them.

"Then the voles or water rats that live in the depths of this truly
English forest are not the least curious specimens of animal life to be
found therein.  If you happen to be reclining anywhere near a pool that
by long-established custom belongs to them alone, before many minutes
one, if not two of them, will come out to stare and wonder at you; they,
like the hares, sit up on one end to conduct their scrutiny; and they
gaze and gaze and gaze again, digging their finger joints or knuckles
into their eyes, in a half-human kind of a way, to squeeze out the
water, and clear their sight for one more wondering look."

[My country readers, who love nature, must have noticed the voles at
this queer performance.]

"What is he at all?  Where did he come from?  What is he going to do?
These are the questions those voles seem trying in vain to solve.

"Here in this New Forest is a silence seldom broken save by the song of
bird or cry of some wild creature in pain, while all around you is a
wealth of floral beauty and verdure that is charming in the extreme.

"Yes, Archie, I came ere autumn was over to love that forest well.  I
was not selfish enough, though, to keep all the pleasures of it quite to
myself, and the Major's children often accompanied me in my rambles.  I
used to read Burns and Ossian to them.  They liked that, but they liked
the flute far better.  It appealed straight to their senses.

"But when autumn passed away, when the leaves fell, and the fields were
bleak and bare, at night, when the wind moaned around the house which I
now called home, then, Archie, I used to dream I heard the surf beating
in on the rugged shores of my native land.  I would start and listen,
and long to be once more in Scotland.

"I went, one day, to the forest all alone; I went to think.

"`What are you staying here for?' perhaps said one little thought.
`Major Walton may leave you money when he dies.'

"I smothered that thought at its birth, and crushed many more like it.

"Kind good old Major Walton!  I must tear myself away; I must be
independent; I must push my own way in the world.

"`Heaven help me to do so,' I prayed.  Then I took out the little old
Bible Nancy had given me, Archie, and I found some comfort there.

"I was putting it back again in my bosom when a little card dropped out;
I picked it up.  On it were pressed these, Archie."

Kenneth took the Book from his breast as he spoke, and opening it,
handed the card to Archie.

"I know," said the latter: "the primrose and the bit of heather."

"Yes, dear boy, foolish of me, I know; but I have never parted with
them, and if I go to Davy Jones's locker--as we sailors say--if I am
drowned, Archie, these flowers will sink with me.

"But on that winter's day in the forest, Archie, these flowers seemed to
speak to me, or rather the golden-haired child spoke to me through these
flowers.  I was back again on the hills above Glen Alva walking by her
side; the sky above us was blue and clear, the clouds on the horizon
looking like snow-white feathers, and the bees making drowsy music among
the pinky heath.

"I started up, and the vision fled, and around me were only the bare
bleak forest trees and the fading heather.  The vision fled, but it left
in my breast the desire stronger now than ever to make my own way in the
world, by the blessing of Providence; and Providence has never deserted
me yet, Archie, lad.

"I went straight home.  I saw Major Walton, and talked to him, and told
him all.

"He seemed sorry.  The last words he said to me when I went away--and
there was moisture in the old man's eyes as he spoke--were these:--

"`Mind, I'm not tired of you, and I hope to live to meet you once
again.'

"I went to Southampton next day.  I thought I had nothing to do but
march on board some outward-bound ship, that they would be glad to have
me.

"Alas!  I was disappointed."

[The author hopes some boy who meditates running away to sea may read
these lines.]

"I was rudely jostled and laughed at, I was called a Scot, a Sawnie, a
Johnny-raw, but work was never once offered me.

"I wandered about the streets, not knowing what to do.  The few coins I
had in my possession did not last many days.

"I felt sad and unhappy.  I felt almost sorry I had left the good people
who had done so much for me.  The `bairnies' had been in tears when I
went away; even the black-and-tan terrier had followed me a long way
down the road, and looked very `wae and wistfu'' at me with his brown
beseeching eyes when I said he must go back.

"For two whole days I had hardly anything to eat.  My flute, that I was
fain to fall back upon, failed to support me, for the English, Archie,
have not so much music and romance in their souls as the Scotch have.
But one thing the English have is this, Archie, sound common-sense and a
love of derring-do.

"I was standing one day on the pier at Plymouth.  I had played my way
with my flute all this distance in the hopes of getting a ship.  I was
no more successful than before.

"On this particular day, Archie, the drum was up [the storm signal], the
wind blew cold and high, and the seas tossed their white manes as they
rushed each other up the bay.  I was feeling very sad and disconsolate,
when all at once I heard a voice say to a man beside me,--

"`I'll give a guinea to be taken out to yonder ship.'

"`I don't care to win no guinea,' said the fellow addressed, a hulking
boatman in a rough blue jersey.  `I don't care to win no guinea on a day
like this.  'Sides, sir, I hain't got no mate.'

"`I'll go,' I cried.

"`You!' said the gentleman; `why, you're but a child.'

"`I'm a Scotch boy,' I replied, `and I know boating well.'

"`All right, my lad; jump in.'

"It took us nearly an hour, but we did it.

"I was very wet, and the gentleman kindly took me below, and gave me
warm coffee.

"`Now,' he said, `I'm going to give you half a guinea, and the man half,
for if he has to change the gold, he will cheat you.'

"`Are you captain of this ship, sir?'  I asked.

"`I am, lad; I'm all that is for the captain.'

"`Well, sir,' I said, `give the man all the guinea, and take me with you
as a boy.'

"I then told him all my story.

"`We don't sail for a week,' he said, `and if in that time you get your
mother's consent, I'll be glad to have so plucky a youngster on board my
craft.'

"My dear mother gave her consent, as you know, Archie; and so I became a
sailor and a wanderer."

I have but epitomised Kenneth's story.  He took much longer time to tell
it than I, the author of this little book, am doing, and besides, there
was much conversation interspersed with it betwixt him and his old
friend Archie.

The moon was high up above the forest trees before he finished, shedding
a flood of golden light over mountain and sea, so, promising to resume
his narrative next evening, Kenneth arose, and soon after all was silent
and dark inside this peaceful cottage.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

KENNETH'S STORY (CONTINUED)--AT THE CAVE.

  "On, on the vessel flies; the land is gone,
  And winds are rude in Biscay's sleepless bay;
  Four days are sped, but with the fifth anon,
  New shores descried make every bosom gay."

  Byron.

Scene: The Spanish Senor and his two guests, Kenneth and Archie, once
more together, not in the mountain cottage to-night, but in a cave,
close down by the edge of the sea.  It was the sea that was lisping on
the sands not far from where they sat on the rocks, but the view beyond
was one of moonlight, trees, rocks, and water combined, altogether very
beautiful, and in some respects almost English-like.

Yes, now by moonlight it looked thoroughly English, but if by day you
had rowed round these rocks, you would soon have been undeceived, for
sharks in dozens visited the deep water, and in the cracks beyond were
alligators, active and strong, and very hideous-looking crabs often
crawled up the wet black cliffs; and among the trees themselves were
great snakes, deadly and venomous; but it all looked very quiet and
lovely now.

Kenneth was fond of caves, and there were plenty of them about here.  He
kept his boat in one.  That very day, together the two friends had
launched it, and spent all the long hours of sunlight in sailing or
rowing about among the lovely islands of this sparkling sea, that look
on a calm day as if they were actually afloat not in the water, but in
the sky itself.

"My life," said Kenneth, resuming his narrative of the day before, "my
life, I thought, was going to be all rose-tinted now.

"Alas!  Archie, lad, I soon found it quite the reverse, and it does
really seem to me that those writers of books who paint a sailor's
existence as one long picnic do grievous wrong to the young folks who
read them.

"A sailor's life is like the billowy ocean on which he resides, all ups
and downs, Archie."

"I can easily believe that," said his friend.

"But Captain Pendrey was very good to me, and there was an old boatswain
on board who became my friend from the very first.  He taught me to
reef, to splice, and to steer, ay, and a deal more; in fact, during the
two years I sailed in the old _Miranda_, he made a man of me.

"You see, Archie, I was already so far a seaman that I was not afraid of
the ocean; and I was good at an oar.

"I was downright seasick when I first went out of Plymouth Sound.  We
had a head wind, and being only a sailing craft, had to beat and beat
for days.  I didn't care much then what became of me.  But the rough old
bo'sun came and shook me up--I was lying nearly dead on a
sea-chest--`Pull yourself together, youngster.  Go on deck,' he said,
`and look at the waves.  Ain't they mountains, just!  It won't do to
give in.'

"I did go on deck and look at the waves, just for a moment.  A green sea
came thundering over the bows, took me off my legs, and washed me away
down into the lee-scuppers, where I would have been drowned if the
bo'sun hadn't caught me up.

"`I'm not going below again, though,' I said to myself.

"Nor did I.

"The boats were all on board; I got into one of these as night fell,
lashed myself to a thwart, and wet though I was, I slept with my head on
a coil of ropes all through that stormy night.  Stiff in the morning?
Yes, a little, but I was better.  I got my clothes off, and a man dashed
buckets of sea water over me, and this revived me so much that I went
below.

"The men in my mess were at breakfast; they were sitting on deck, jammed
into corners anyhow, with their sou'wester hats between their legs to
steady their coffee mugs.

"`Salt pork, my lad,' said the bo'sun.  `You're just at that stage that
salt pork will turn the scale.'

"I took the hunk of pork he gave me and devoured it.

"Well, the bo'sun was right.  It did turn the scale with a vengeance: I
went on deck and hove the lead apparently.  The steward passed me and
said,--

"`You're not sick, are you, Sandie?'

"`No,' I said, `I'm only shamming.  Ugh!'

"But by the time we were over the bay I was as sea-fast as any one on
board.  I got my sea legs, too.

"How blue the sea was now!  How white the birds that skimmed over its
surface!  And the sails of ships that appeared in the distance were like
snow when the sun shone over them.

"It wasn't all sunshine even then, for a smart breeze was blowing, and
cloud shadows chasing each other over the sea, just as I had often seen
them do over fields of ripening grain in Glen Alva.

"I settled down to sea-life very easily now and very naturally.  I soon
knew every rope and spar and bolt in her, and was as happy as the
sea-gulls.  I cannot say more.

"We touched at Madeira, and here the captain took me on shore, and all
over the place.  What an isle of romance and beauty it is!

"We called in both at Saint Helena and Ascension, the former not the
lonely sea-girt rock that old books describe, but a charming island of
mountain, strath, and glen.  Nor did I find Ascension to be a cinder
with a few turtles on its beach.  It has been cultivated to a wonderful
extent, and I never did see a bluer, brighter ocean than that which
laves its shores.  The Cape of Good Hope hove in sight at last.  I
watched its bold and rugged coast as we came nearer and still more near
to it.

"It was but like a long irregular cloud lying along the horizon at
first.  Then this cloud grew higher and darker and more defined.  Then
it grew bluer in parts, and lines stood boldly out towards us, then it
turned blue and purple, oh! so lovely, and last of all it was a cloud no
longer, but mountains stern and wild, and braelands covered half-way up
with purple heath and wild flowers--geraniums I found afterwards these
were--with rocks on the shore and a long white line of surf and sand.

"We did our business at the Cape and bore up for Australia.

"What a stretch of sea we had to cross, and what a length of time it was
ere we reached Sydney!

"But I was not idle all these months.  It was so good of Captain
Pendrey, but he seemed to take a delight in teaching me navigation.  He
flattered me, too, I fear.

"`You're far too good and bright a boy,' he said, `to stick before the
mast.'

"So I worked and worked not only to please him, but because there was a
prospect of my one day walking on the snowy quarter-deck of some
beautiful barque, her proud commander.

"Every one on board loved our captain, although they called him the old
man behind his back.  From Australia we went to Hong Kong, then to
Ceylon, from there to Calcutta, and then back again to Ceylon, and
returned to India, lying up for repairs at the city of Bombay.  And my
kind captain never once went on shore without taking me with him, so
that I saw so much that was strange in life, lad, that I could sit and
talk in this cave for a month if my good friend here would bring us
prog, and then I wouldn't have half told you all my strange experiences.

"I had been now nearly two years at sea, and had passed one examination,
so things were looking up.

"I dearly loved the sea and sea-life now.  I would not have changed
places with a land-lubber for all the world.

"We had many narrow escapes, of course, for our ship was a clipper, and
the captain `cracked on.'  He did not mind risk so long as he made good
voyages.  But somehow I never dreamt of danger, not even while in the
centre of a tornado in the Indian Ocean at night, and if there be a more
fearful experience than that in the life of a mariner, I have yet to
encounter it.

"Nor did I dream of danger even when seated of a night under the bright
stars at the fo'c'stle head, while the men spun yarn after yarn of the
awful dangers they had come through.

"`I've been wrecked often and often,' said our old `bo'sun' one night.
`I was in the _Bombay_ when she was burned; I was a man-o'-war's man
then.  Ah!  Kennie, lad, it is a fearful thing, a fire at sea.  I hope
you'll never see a burning ship.  Over seventy of my shipmates were
doomed that night, and some of them met worse deaths than drowning.

"`Another time,' he went on, `I was the only one saved out of a gunboat.
I was taken off a bit of wreckage and rigging by the lifeboat after
drifting about for twelve wet, cold, weary hours.  Strange thing was
this.  I had been made captain of the foretop only a week before we were
wrecked.  'Tis funny, mate, but it was on that same foretop I floated
about so long.  He! he!  I was captain of the foretop then, and no
mistake, and monarch of all I surveyed.'

"Just three weeks after this particular evening, Archie, I was away
aloft one beautiful day.  We were well down over the line, and bearing
about South-South-East.

"There was a kind of haze over the ocean that day which made seeing
distinctly difficult at any great distance, but I noticed what at first
sight I thought was a bird or a shark's fin.  I hailed the deck as soon
as I made out it was something afloat with men on it.

"`Where away?' came the reply.

"On pointing in the direction, the yards were trimmed, and we soon got
nearer.

"The sight that met my eyes I will not forget till my dying day.  The
survivors of a ship that had foundered they were, half-naked, half-dead,
sun-blistered, sinking wretches, five in all.

"They had been afloat on a raft for nine days without food to eat, and
with hardly a drop of water to quench their awful thirst.

"From that day, Archie, I began to think that a sailor's life had its
dark as well as its rosy side.

"A year after this grief came.  We were homeward bound.  We got nearly
to the Cape, and there our ship was dashed on a lee-shore, and I lost
two of the best friends ever I had at sea, our poor captain and the dear
old bo'sun.

"I was landed at Symon's Town at last, and there, Archie, I got your
letter, and found I was an orphan.  And all this great grief came to me
within a fortnight.

"I had been bound for English shores; my hopes beat high; in a few
months longer, at most, I would once again clasp my dear mother in my
arms, once more visit my home.  Changed I knew the glen would be, but
old friends would give me a warm greeting.

"Heigho! the blow fell; I determined not to return, and, Archie, from
that day to this I have been a wanderer.

"But bless Providence for all His mercies!  Archie, lad, I'm not badly
off, and I have you.

"Shake hands, old boy.  Now I've been doing all the talking, I shall
take it out of you next, for I dearly love to hear your voice.

"Senor Gasco, _mon ami_, suppose we launch our little boat, and be off.
I'm longing for supper and longing to sit down and rest in our mountain
cottage.  I don't think I've been so happy for many and many a long
year.

"Come along, Archie.  How lovely the moonlight is playing over the
water!"

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

FRIDAY NIGHT AT SEA.

  "Now round the galley fire the merry crew,
  With song and yarn and best of cheer,
  Have gathered.  And storms may rage, and seas may rise,
  And thunders roll; they know not fear."

  Anon.

Scene: A ship at sea, south of the Cape of Good Hope.  A steamer
evidently from her build, though the funnel has been lowered, and a gale
of wind is roaring through her rigging, bellying out the few sails she
is able to carry till it looks as though the cloth would bust.  She is
making heavy weather, dipping the ends of her long yards right into the
water, and plunging so much, that at times neither her jib-boom nor bows
are visible in the foam and spray.  She must be shipping tons of water.
Looking at her as we are now doing with the eye of imagination, it would
seem there could be little else save discomfort on board of her.  And
the night, too, is closing around her dark and thick.  The sea is very
troubled, the waves are racing, brawling, foam-crested billows,
lightning plays around the ship every now and then, and thunders hurtle
in the air, the awful noise appearing to run along over the sea.  But
let us go on board of her.

Here are Kenneth and Archie.  Neither is on duty.  Kenneth's watch will
come on deck at midnight.  Archie, who is engineer of this craft, may be
called upon at any moment to stir up the banked fires and get up steam.

This is the ship in which Kenneth has been second mate for eighteen
months, including the time he lay sick or roamed convalescent on the
South American shore, where Archie found him.  They have bidden farewell
to that beautiful coast, which in some parts is so enchanting, with its
wealth of vegetation, its grand old woods, its fruit trees, its
flower-trees, its flowers themselves, the life and loveliness that teems
everywhere on the earth, in the air, in the sea, on the little islands,
green and feathery, that peep up here and there out of the blue, on
mountain top, and even in its caves, that I feel sad as well as
sorrowful.  I cannot pause to describe it all.

But why should I?  My descriptions, after all, would fall flat on the
senses of the reader, even with the aid of the best of illustrations,
for no artist can give colour and movement combined.  Go, reader, and
see the world for yourself if you feel so inclined, and if ever you have
the chance, I can tell you from long experience it is a very beautiful
one.

"Well," said Kenneth, "we came up here, Archie, lad, to have a walk, but
I don't see much chance.  What a night it is going to be!  How black the
sky!  How vivid the lightning!  How close the horizon is--"

The last part of Kenneth's sentence was lost in a peal of thunder.

"Stand by!  Jump, Archie.  There is a comber."

They both leapt on the top of the capstan as an immense green sea swept
over the bows and came tearing aft, carrying everything movable before
it.

When it passed away, and the water found partial exit by the scuppers,--

"I don't think there will be much pleasure in a walk to-night, Kennie,"
said Archie.  "Wouldn't I like to be back again on that flower mountain
of yours!"

"Poor dear old Gasco!" said Kennie with a sigh.  "You find good among
people of all nations."

"He was very sad when you bade him good-bye."

"Yes, and I won't forget his last words.  They are so true `Farewell,'
he sighed rather than said, `farewell, if farewell it must be.  This
meeting to part, and meeting _but_ to part with those one gets to love,
is one of the most soul-sobering feelings attached to our lot here
below.  Ah!' he continued, lifting up a finger--you know his style,
Archie--`Ah! my young friend, what a joyful place heaven must be, if
only for this one reason, we shall meet all our dear, dear friends
again, and parting will be unknown!  Farewell; we'll meet Yonder, if not
on earth again.'"

There was a pause in the conversation, filled in by the whistling wind
and the ceaseless rush of the dashing waves.

"Well," said Archie at last, "I cannot say that a night like this,
Kennie, makes one feel enamoured of a sailor's life."

"You must take the shadow as well as the sunshine, though," returned
Kenneth.  "You would rather be back at my boathouse cave, I daresay, at
Cotago, launching the tub for a pleasant day among the islands, wouldn't
you?"

"Yes, indeed.  Stand by; there is another wave."

"Hark?" said Kennie during a lull.  "They are singing forward, round the
galley fire.  I've a good mind to go and join them; will you come? a
second officer can do what a first can't."

"Yes, take your flute; that will be an excuse."

Given a trim ship and plenty of sea room, and it isn't all the wind that
can blow that will succeed in lowering the spirits of the British
sailor.

The jolliest of the crew of the _Brilliant_ were seated to-night near
the galley fire, or they clung to lockers or lay on the deck; it is all
the same.  It was cold enough to make a fire pleasant and agreeable, and
they were all within speaking distance; they had pipes and tobacco and
plates of sea-pie, for it was Friday night, the old custom of making
Friday a kind of Banian day being still kept up in some vessels of the
merchant service.

"Hullo!  Mr McAlpine," cried the carpenter.  "Right welcome, sir.  And
you too, Mr McCrane.  Glad to see the smiling faces of the pair of you.
Ain't we, mates?"

"That we are," and "that we be," came the ready chorus.

"Some sea-pie, gentlemen," said the cook, handing each a steaming basin
of that most savoury dish.

"I made it," cried the bo'sun.

"Not all," cried another.  "I rolled the paste."

"And I cut the beef."

"And I sliced the bacon."

"And I chopped the onions."

"And I pared the 'taters."  This last from the cabin-boy.

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared the jolly carpenter.  "I say, maties, blowed if we
haven't all had a hand in the pie."

"Well, it is jolly eating anyhow," said Kenneth.

"The smell of it's enough to raise a dying man," quoth Archie.

"Bravo, sir," cried the bo'sun, "and I hopes it makes ye both 'appy."

"Happy, yes," said Kenneth.  "I'm so happy now, I can sing and play."

"Oh I give us a toot on the old flute first."

Kenneth gave them "a toot."

"Now give us a song."

"Let the gentleman take his breath," the carpenter remonstrated.

"Never a breath," persisted the bo'sun.  "He must pay his footin', I
says.  And I warrant you, too, he has as much pleasure in singing as we
has in listenin' to 'im."

"Oh! shut up, old Barkshire," said somebody.

"Barkshire be bothered," cried the bo'sun.  "I'm not ashamed to own my
shire.  You comes from the land o' _Tres_ and _Pens_; you're
west-country, you be.  Have to fish for your breakfast every mornin',
else ye doesn't get none: He! he!"

"Well, never mind," said the good-natured carpenter, smiling.  "We're
all nationalities here.  Bill here is York; Tim is Irish; I'm just what
Pipes calls me, Barkshire."

"And I and my friend are Scotch," said Kenneth.

"Hurrah! for a Scotch song, then."

It wasn't one, but several songs Kennie and Archie had to sing, but all
Scotch, and what can beat them, reader mine?

  "Sing ony o' the auld Scotch sangs,
      The blithesome or the sad;
  They mak' me laugh when I am wae,
      And weep when I am glad.
  Though eyes grow dim and hair grow grey,
      Until the day I dee,
  I'll bless the Scottish tongue that sings
      The auld Scotch sangs to me."

There was no satisfying his audience, so once more Kennie had to fall
back upon the flute.  While playing, a heavy sea struck the vessel on
the weather bow, and the water came tumbling down the hatchway; although
it rushed forward among the men and hissed against the hot iron fending
of the copper, they hardly shifted their positions.

But Kenneth played a selection of the best English, Irish, Scotch, and
Welsh airs now, now merry, now plaintive and sad, now almost wailing,
and anon merry again, once more.

There was a perfect chorus of applause when he had finished.  The old
bo'sun must crawl over to the corner where the musician was--although,
owing to the motion of the ship, it was no easy task--and shake Kenneth
by the hand.

"God bless you, young sir," he said, and the tears were in his eyes.  "I
was back in bonnie Berkshire all the time you was a-playin', sir.  I saw
my children, sir, runnin' among the daisies, the crimson poppies growin'
among the corn's green, the waving lime trees all in flower and covered
with bees--ah! sir, you took the old man home, you took him home."

"Don't talk twaddle," cried his tormentor; "he took us all home, for the
matter o' that."

"Sit down, ye ould fool!" cried Tim O'Flaherty.

Kenneth put up his flute, and the bo'sun sat down beside him.

"Hark to the thunder!" he said; "listen to the thud o' the seas.  My
eye! it is a night and a half.  Just like the night we went over in the
old _Salanella_."

"Went over!" cried the carpenter.  "What d'ye mean?"

"Why, I means what I says, to be sure.  We turned turtle.  Every soul
below was called to his account, and only myself and five more managed
to cling to the keel."

"She must have been a barnacley old tub," said the cook, "else you
wouldn't ha' got over the copper."

"You just mind your ladle, old man," said the carpenter.  "You're only a
cook, arter all, and Pipes knows what he's a-talking about."

"O' course I does," said Pipes.  "Thank ye, Chips; it ain't very often
you takes my part.  O' course I knows what I'se a-talkin' about.  The
keel rolled over to us, and we easily got on top."

"Suffer much?"

Pipes did not look at the speaker, but away into vacancy as if he were
recalling the past.

"Suffer!" he said.  "I hope it may never be the lot o' anybody in this
galley to know what we suffered.  For three days and nights o' storm I
and one other clung to that ship's bottom; the rest dropped off one by
one or slipped willingly into the sea, glad to end their terrible
misery.

"I never did think the ocean was so vast and empty-like till then,
mates.  All the weary days we did nothing but gaze and gaze around us,
and hope and hope, and pray and pray.  Well, blessed be His name, mates,
God heard our prayers at last.  A ship--'twas the second we'd seen, for
the first took no notice of us--bore down and took us off, and that was
no easy task in the condition our misery had reduced us to."

"Listen," cried one of the men.

There were three distinct knocks on the deck with a heavy boot; [A plan
adopted in some merchant ships for calling the attention of those below
to an order about to be given] then a stentorian voice sang down the
hatchway,--

"All hands, shorten sail!  Look alive there, lads.  Tumble up.  Tumble
up."

A fiercer squall than any the vessel had yet encountered struck her
before the men had time to reach the yards, and the sails they would
have furled were rent into ribbons, and the noise they made as they
fluttered out in the breeze was like the volley-firing of a company of
soldiers.  It was two hours before those whose watch was not on deck got
back to the galley fire.  It had just gone eight bells in the last dog
watch, so the evening was still young.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE DOLDRUMS.

  "See the pudding, hear the fun;
  The laugh and joke and glee;
  The ship may in the Doldrums lie,
  But--'tis Christmas Day at sea."

  Anon.

Scene: A ship in the Doldrums.  It is the saucy _Brilliant_.  She has
been to Calcutta, and is now on her way back to the Cape.  And it is
Christmas Day, and she ship is in the Doldrums.  Longitude 90 degrees
East; latitude nothing at all, for she is as nearly "on top o' the
'quator," as Jack calls it, as possible.  She encountered a tornado
farther north, which gives the reason for her being now somewhat out of
her course.  But she stood it well, and to see her now, with her long
black lines, her tapering spars, and snow-white decks, you could not
believe that but a fortnight before she had hardly a morsel of bulwark
left, that, in fact, the bulwarks were more like sheep hurdles than
anything shipshape.

The Doldrums!  There isn't a breath of wind; the surface of the great
rolling waves is as smooth as polished steel, and much about the same
colour.  The sun is beating straight down from a blue but cruelly hot
sky.  The pitch is soft in the deck seams; the men in the stoke-hole are
to be pitied.

Yes, steam is up, there is a frothy wake behind her, and her bows cut
through the water like a knife.

But the awning is spread all over the quarter-deck, and her tables are
laid, for the captain is a right good fellow, and the men are all coming
to dine with him.

They are dropping aft even now, one by one or twos and twos, somewhat
shy-looking, but with beaming faces, and dressed in their best,
bare-footed, in blue serge pants and clean spruce white jerseys.

"How different Christmas in the Doldrums is," said Captain Smith, "from
what we are used to have it at home in old England.  Sit in, men; no
ceremony to-day.  Mr McAlpine, you'll carve the beef.  Mr McCrane, I'm
sure you will show the men a good example at your end of the table.
Now, doctor, will you ask a blessing?"

Fiddles were placed across the table--long sticks shipped together by
pieces of line--and the cloth was laid over that, so that, in spite of
the incessant and most uneasy motion of the vessel, the dishes
themselves were kept fairly steady.

As soon as eating was well commenced, tongues were loosed, and the
conversation flowed freely enough, and why should it not?  The captain
was jolly, frank, and open, and his officers gentlemen in manners, so
the men were not afraid to speak before them.

Yarn followed yarn, and tale tale, but all short and crisp; the captain
joked himself, and encouraged his men to joke, so that, despite the
heat, it really was a very pleasant Christmas dinner-party.

But the coming of the pudding was the great event.  For, you see, it was
an immensely large one, and as the ship rolled so much, the danger of
its being sent flying into the scuppers before reaching the table, and
being all smashed, was very great indeed.

Even the night before, the captain had commissioned the doctor to
superintend its safe delivery.  And that worthy had positively got Chips
to make a kind of ambulance stretcher, partly canvas and partly bamboo
cane, to put the trencher on, and this was borne by two men.

"Now," said the captain, when the roast beef had been taken away, "are
you all ready, doctor?"

"Yes," said the man of physic, wiping the sweat off his brow.  "I'm all
ready if the pudding is."

"The cook's waiting, sir," said the steward, who was trying to steady
himself by keeping firm hold of the mizen rigging.

"Well, here's for off," said the surgeon, getting up.

"Do your duty like a man," cried the captain, laughing, as the doctor
went staggering forward.  "And keep to your legs, doctor, keep to your
legs."

There was silence now around the table for many long anxious minutes.

It was a solemn time.  There was nothing to be heard but the throb-throb
of the engines--the beating of the ship's great heart.

Would the doctor and his party succeed in landing the pudding aft?  That
was the great question for the time being, which every one was asking
himself.  Would the pudding arrive in safety?

Every eye was turned forward.

Behold, they come.  Their heads are already above the fore hatch.
Slowly they emerge, and stand for a moment swaying hither and thither.
The doctor heads the procession.  The cook himself brings up the rear.
Now the doctor's voice is heard.

"Are you all ready again, men?"

"All ready, sir."

"Steady, then; steady as you go.  March!"

How steady they move!  How quietly!  A soldier's funeral is nothing to
it!  How they rock, and how they sway, taking advantage of every seeming
break in the ship's motion, cautioning each other with uplifted fingers,
the doctor with his left hand over the prize, the cook with his right,
ready to clutch it if it moves, ready to fall with it if it falls.

Nearer and nearer they come.  Nearer and nearer the great IT--the
pudding--comes.  And now it is almost alongside the captain and the
expectant crew, when--oh moment of grief and horror!--the ship gives a
fearful lurch, and the whole procession, pudding and all, is sent flying
across the deck and brought up all of a heap close under the port
bulwarks.

A groan of disappointment rises up from the table.  The pudding is
smashed to pieces, of course.  No, for see--bravo! the doctor--he has
clutched the trencher at a critical moment.  Phoenix-like, he uprises
with it from that chaos of arms and legs.  He watches the chance.  He
gives one quick glance around him, at sea, at sky, at moving ship.  He
stakes his honour, his fame, and the very existence of that glorious
globe of fragrant dough on one bold manoeuvre.  Bearing it high over his
head, he glides, he slides, he skates, one might say, towards the table;
and in shorter time by far than it takes me to describe the gallant
deed, he plumps the "great champion of the pudding race" down in front
of the captain's pile of plates.

"Hurrah! hurrah!"

Why, the very sharks deep down in the ocean's blackest depths heard the
shout; they took it for a battle-cry, and came surface-wards in all
haste, making sure of a glorious feast.  And an answering shout came up
from the engine-room, where the stokers were at work.  For they knew
that the pudding was safely landed, and that their share would shortly
come.

And the captain must needs shake the doctor by the hand, while tears of
joy and admiration stood in his eyes.

"Doctor," he said, "you're a brick, sir, a brick and a half, sir.  I
never saw a bolder move.  I never saw anything so pluckily done in my
life before.  I'm proud of my surgeon, proud of you."

Then he sat down.

The doctor made some reply, which was hardly heard amid the exclamations
of accord in the captain's speech, which uprose from all round the
table.

A rough old sea-dog of a doctor he was, too, a thorough sailor.  Any one
could have seen that at a glance.  Rough he was, yet kindly-hearted, and
there was not a man on board, from the captain to the Kroo boy who
helped the cook, who wouldn't have risked his life for their surgeon.

I leave you to guess whether or not justice was done to that Christmas
plum-pudding.  Indeed, I only wish you could have seen the happy smiling
faces that now surrounded the table, and really--though it was not
polite of them--several of the crew had no less than _three_ helps, for
"Cut and come again" was the captain's motto on this Christmas Day in
the Doldrums.

Well, of course songs and yarns followed dinner.  The captain told a
story, Archie told a story, Kenneth sang and played, the old bo'sun
called Pipes had something queer to say, and so had the carpenter called
Chips.

"Now then, doctor," cried the captain.  "It's your turn.  Tell us
something good."

The doctor cleared his throat.

"I'll do my best, sir," said the doctor with a modest smile.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

FROZEN UP IN THE NORTH.

  "Now hie' we to the Norlan seas
  And far-off fields of ice."

  Anon.

"It is twenty years ago!  Twenty years ago!  Twenty years!" began the
doctor.

"Yes, I own to it; no need for this matter-of-fact memory of mine to
nudge me so, and keep on reminding me of the flight of sly old Father
Time.  'Tis twenty years ago this very summer since I sailed away to
Polar seas, in a small but sturdy brig of barely three hundred tons.  A
medical student I was, in charge of fifty men, all told, and with all a
medical student's audacity and ignorance of the noble profession to
which I have now the honour to belong.  What cared I then if half the
crew fell ill?  There was plenty of medicine in the chest.  I would do
my best, and dose them.  Well, if, after being dosed, they should die,
why, the sea was deep enough--they should not want for decent burial!
And what cared I that a fearful accident might take place, and heads be
gashed, and limbs be crushed?  There were surgical instruments _galore_
on board, practice makes perfect, and if my patients succumbed after an
operation, well, every dog has his day, and the _post hoc propter hoc_
argument has been proved to be unsound.

"Gentlemen, have ever you roughed it in the Arctic Ocean, in a bit of a
ship so small that a schoolboy, with average length of legs, could clear
its decks from binnacle to bowsprit with a hop, step, and jump, the
saloon not larger than two railway compartments, your state-room not
half so big as one?  Have you been in a gale of wind in such a craft?
Was she on her beam-ends, with the cold, green seas, curling higher and
higher as they advanced, forming awful arches of water, into which the
vessel seemed to be sucked, and which broke, not _on_, but over and
beyond her?  Have you been ice-logged in a sea-way in such a vessel, no
land, nor even a berg, in sight--only the restless waves, that twanged
and hummed, and sang in the frosty air as they passed you, with bows and
bulwarks, decks and spars, and rigging and blocks, mere shapes of ice,
and ice alone to all appearance, the men's caps and coats, and hair and
beards, so white with the freezing spray, that they looked, as they
moved to and fro on the slippery decks, like the ghostly crew of a ghost
ship?  Have you been in such a craft when she was being squeezed in this
pack, the one dark spot in the midst of a limitless plain of dazzling
snow-clad ice, all lifting and rolling and moving with the pressure of
the invisible waves that are passing swiftly underneath?  Have you ever
heard the terrible sounds an ice-pack emits, when the swell from a
distant storm comes sweeping under it, the groaning, the wailing,
grinding, griding noise, as if the ocean on which you stood were filled
with old-world monsters in their dying agonies?  Have you ever listened
to the roaring thunder of a lofty iceberg rent in pieces, and falling
headlong into the sea?  Have you stood on the pack and seen two bergs
crush an acre of bay ice between them, piling the pieces one over the
other, like leaves of a book or cards in a pack, till they stood high as
the tallest tree in a forest of pines?  Have you been out alone on the
ice-field at night, far away from your ship, amid a silence that, like
Egyptian darkness, could be felt, watching the glorious tints of the--

  "`Aurora Borealis race,
  That flit ere you can point their place?'

"And, even while gazing and admiring, have you seen dark clouds roll
rapidly up from the horizon and blot this aurora out, so that ere you
could reach your brig you were surrounded by swirling drift and blinding
snow, more dangerous far than the sand-storms that sweep over the Soudan
deserts, with the thunder rattling close o'erhead, and the bewildering
lightning in swift diffusive gleams intensifying the cave-like darkness
that followed?

"If such experiences have not been yours, you may have been tossed about
on the giant waves of the broad Atlantic, you may have weathered the
Cape in a gale, and the Horn in a snow-storm, you may have sweltered for
weeks in a rolling calm under a tropical sun, and been the sport of a
tornado in the Indian Ocean, yet there are wonders in the mighty deep
seen by some who go down to the sea in ships to which you are a total
stranger.  From beginning to end, our voyage in that little brig, twenty
years ago, was a non-propitious one.  We ran before a gale all the way
to Lerwick, where the Greenland fleet lay anchored.  We had hardly left
the rock-bound shores of Shetland--that `sea-begirdled peat moss'--ere
the blackness of darkness settled down on the ocean around us; and storm
and tempest became our constant companions for three long weeks, till
sheltered at last under the lee of the pack, with bowsprit and topmasts
gone, and the bulwarks more like the palings one sometimes sees around a
cattle-field than anything else in the world.  But even worse was to
follow: with several other ships we took the ice, which was loose, and
in three weeks' time we found ourselves all alone in the midst of a hard
frozen ice-field, and fully one hundred miles from the open water, a
bright blue frosty sky above us, and in silence--a silence never broken
even by the cry of a bird or guttural roar of Arctic bear.

"After many months of `solitary confinement,' we escaped and reached
home at last.  Many of the men's relations met us on the pier, dressed
in deepest mourning; the `blacks,' as such dress is called, had been
donned for us, for our ship had been reported as lost with all hands!

"Life in that lonesome ice-pack was a weary `bide,'--

  "`Day after day, day after day,
  And neither breath nor motion.'

"No, not as much wind as would have sufficed to lift a snowflake, never
a cloud in the sky, and the sun going round and round and round, but far
above the horizon even at midnight.  We tired of reading books; we tired
of card-playing and games on the ice; we even tired of music itself.
Monotony generated _ennui_; _ennui_ bred melancholy; plenty of exercise
on the ice alone could save us from succumbing to actual illness.  We
knew that well, but we were thoroughly apathetic, and did not care to
take it.  The captain, a young and energetic man, at last hit upon a
happy expedient which succeeded most completely in restoring something
of life and animation to the crew, who were rapidly merging into a state
of Rip Van Winkleism, painful to behold.  He determined to form a camp
three miles away from the ship.  Simply walking to and from it would be
some little excitement, it would be exercise with a purpose, and
exercise, as medical men will tell you, without pleasure or purpose, is
entirely useless in a hygienic point of view.

"Our captain, the first and second mates, and myself were seated at
breakfast one morning when he made his proposal.

"`Doctor,' he said--NB, he called me `Doctor' always, but at that time I
had no more business with the title than the tailor had--

"`Doctor, how are the men getting on forward?'

"`They haven't much life in them,' I replied; `they are all making
silver rings now out of sixpenny bits and shillings.  That is the latest
fad, but the coins will soon be all used up; then I suppose all hands
will go to sleep for a month or two.'

"`I think, doctor,' said Captain Peters, `that their livers want
stirring up.  Eh?  Don't you, doctor?'

"`Well,' I replied, `anything for a quiet life.  There is plenty of blue
pill and black draught on board.  I'll stir their livers up.  Pass the
ham.'

"`All right, then,' said the captain; `you stir their livers up, and
I'll propose something to-morrow to prevent them getting sluggish
again

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