“An’ I wad fain ken what ye’ll say til ’t, for ye never wad alloo o’ kelpies; an’ there’s me been followed by a sure ane, this last half-hoor—or it may be less!”
“Hoo kenned ye it was a kelpie—it’s maist as dark ’s pick?”
“Kenned! quo’ he? Didna I hear the deevil ahin’ me—the tramp o’ a’ the fower feet o’ ’im, as gien they had been fower an’ twinty!”
“I won’er he didna win up wi’ ye than, Grizzie!” suggested Cosmo.
“Guid kens hoo he didna; I won’er mysel’. But I trow I ran; an’ I tak ye to witness I garred ye steik the door.”
“But they say,” objected Cosmo, who could not fail to perceive from what Aggie said that there was something going on which it behooved him to know, “that the kelpie wons aye by some watter-side.”
“Weel, cam I no by the tarn o’ the tap o’ Stieve Know?”
“What on earth was ye duin’ there efter dark, Grizzie?”
“What was I duin’? I saidna I was there efter dark, but the cratur micht hae seen me pass weel eneuch. Wasna I ower the hill to my ain fowk i’ the How o’ Hap? An’ didna I come hame by Luck’s Lift? Mair by token, wadna the guidman o’ that same hae me du what I haena dune this twa year, or maybe twenty—tak a dram? An’ didna I tak it? An’ was I no in need o’ ’t? An’ didna I come hame a’ the better for ’t?”
“An’ get a sicht o’ the kelpy intil the bargain—eh, Grizzie?” suggested Cosmo.