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.

CONTENTS

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