Kenneth McAlpine Part 2

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 n.o.body 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 sh.o.r.e 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 seash.o.r.e. 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 quant.i.ty 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 n.o.ble 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 la.s.ses 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 sh.o.r.es 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 sh.o.r.es 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 sh.o.r.e. 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 a.s.sistance, 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."