About half-way to the summit, she climbed a rock as if she were a goat, and looked all round her. Then she uttered a shrill, peculiar cry, and listened. No answer came. Getting down as easily as she had got up, she walked along the side of the hill, making her way nearly parallel with their late racecourse, passing considerably above the spot where her defeated rival yet lay, and descending at length a little hollow not far from where she and Francis had been sitting.
In this hollow, which was covered with short, sweet grass, stood a very small hut, built of turf from the peat-moss below, and roofed with sods on which the heather still stuck, if, indeed, some of it was not still growing. So much was it, therefore, of the colour of the ground about it, that it scarcely caught the eye. Its walls and its roof were so thick that, small as it looked, it was much smaller inside; while outside it could not have measured more than ten feet in length, eight in width, and seven in height. Kirsty and her brother Steenie, not without help from Francis Gordon, had built it for themselves two years before. Their father knew nothing of the scheme until one day, proud of their success, Steenie would have him see their handiwork; when he was so much pleased with it that he made them a door, on which he put a lock:—
‘For though this be na the kin’ o’ place to draw crook-fingered gentry,’ he said, ‘some gangrel body micht creep in and mak his bed intil ’t, and that lock ’ill be eneuch to haud him oot, I’m thinkin!’
He also cut for them a hole through the wall, and fitted it with a window that opened and shut, which was more than could be said of every window at the farmhouse.
Into this nest Kirsty went, and in it remained quiet until it began to grow dark. She had hoped to find her brother waiting for her, but, although disappointed, chose to continue there until Francis Gordon should be well on his way to the castle, and then she crept out, and ran to recover her stocking.
When she got home, she found Steenie engrossed in a young horse their father had just bought. She would fain have mounted him at once, for she would ride any kind of animal able to carry her; but, as he had never yet been backed, her father would not permit her.
CHAPTER II
MOTHER AND SON
Francis lay for some time, thinking Kirsty sure to come back to him, but half wishing she would not. He rose at length to see whether she was on the way, but no one was in sight. At once the place was aghast with loneliness, as it must indeed have looked to anyone not at peace with solitude. Having sent several ringing shouts, but in vain, after Kirsty, he turned, and, in the descending light of an autumn afternoon, set out on the rather long walk to his home, which was the wearier that he had nothing pleasant at hand to think about.
Passing the farm where Kirsty lived, about two miles brought him to an ancient turreted house on the top of a low hill, where his mother sat expecting him, ready to tyrannize over him as usual, and none the less ready that he was going to leave her within a week.
‘Where have you been all day, Frank?’ she said.