Kenneth McAlpine Part 6

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 gra.s.s 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, "n.o.body 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_ pa.s.s, 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."