“Oh dear, no! I couldn’t sleep, and got down the ladder, and came to wake you—that’s all.”
“Let’s have a walk, then,” he said.
Now that I had Turkey, there was scarcely more terror in the night than in the day. I consented at once. That we had no shoes on was not of the least consequence to Scotch boys. I often, and Turkey always, went barefooted in summer.
As we left the barn, Turkey had caught up his little whip. He was never to be seen without either that or his club, as we called the stick he carried when he was herding the cattle. Finding him thus armed, I begged him to give me his club. He ran and fetched it, and, thus equipped, we set out for nowhere in the middle of the night. My fancy was full of fragmentary notions of adventure, in which shadows from The Pilgrim’s Progress predominated. I shouldered my club, trying to persuade my imagination that the unchristian weapon had been won from some pagan giant, and therefore was not unfittingly carried. But Turkey was far better armed with his lash of wire than I was with the club. His little whip was like that fearful weapon called the morning star in the hand of some stalwart knight.
We took our way towards the nearest hills, thinking little of where we went so that we were in motion. I guess that the story I have just related must, notwithstanding his unbelief, have been working in Turkey’s brain that night, for after we had walked for a mile or more along the road, and had arrived at the foot of a wooded hill, well known to all the children of the neighbourhood for its bilberries, he turned into the hollow of a broken track, which lost itself in a field as yet only half-redeemed from the moorland. It was plain to me now that Turkey had some goal or other in his view; but I followed his leading, and asked no questions. All at once he stopped, and said, pointing a few yards in front of him:
“Look, Ranald!”
I did look, but the moon was behind the hill, and the night was so dim that I had to keep looking for several moments ere I discovered that he was pointing to the dull gleam of dark water. Very horrible it seemed. I felt my flesh creep the instant I saw it. It lay in a hollow left by the digging out of peats, drained thither from the surrounding bog. My heart sank with fear. The almost black glimmer of its surface was bad enough, but who could tell what lay in its unknown depth? But, as I gazed, almost paralysed, a huge dark figure rose up on the opposite side of the pool. For one moment the scepticism of Turkey seemed to fail him, for he cried out, “The kelpie! The kelpie!” and turned and ran.
I followed as fast as feet utterly unconscious of the ground they trod upon could bear me. We had not gone many yards before a great roar filled the silent air. That moment Turkey slackened his pace, and burst into a fit of laughter.
“It’s nothing but Bogbonny’s bull, Ranald!” he cried.
Kelpies were unknown creatures to Turkey, but a bull was no more than a dog or a sheep, or any other domestic animal. I, however, did not share his equanimity, and never slackened my pace till I got up with him.