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,—

CONTENTS

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

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