“You’re a worse coward than Max.”
“Nay, she shall na go,” cried Scoodrach, making a bound to the spot where Kenneth was seated; but quick as thought the lad twisted round, let himself glide down, and, as the young gillie made a dash at his hands, they slid over the moss and grass and were gone.
Kenneth’s merry laugh came up out of the narrow rift, sounding muffled and strange, and the two lads looked down to where he was creeping along, some fifteen feet below them, in the half-darkness of the hollow, and holding on by the pendent roots which issued from the crevices, as he picked his way along the stones, with the water often washing against his feet.
“Come down, Max. Don’t be a coward,” he cried, as he looked up over his shoulder at the two anxious faces, while the hiss, rush, and roar of the water nearly covered with sound his half-heard voice.
“She’s coing to troon herself, ye ken!” cried Scoodrach, stamping his foot with rage. “Come pack, Maister Ken! Do she hear me? Come pack!”
Kenneth probably did not hear the words, but he looked up again and laughed, as he stood near the end of the narrow gully, with the sunny light of the great hollow behind him showing up his form, and at the same time his face was lit up strangely by the weird gleam of a reflection from the rushing, glassy, peat-stained stream as it glided on to the mouth of the gully for its leap.
“She canna stay here and see her young maister troon herself,” cried Scoodrach wildly. “She must go town and ket trooned too.”
“Coming, Scoody?” cried Kenneth, as he half turned round where he stood on a little block of stone, against which the water surged.
Scoodrach was in the act of seating himself upon the edge previous to lowering himself down, and, why he knew not, he hesitated and spoke, half to Max, half to himself.
“She’ll go and trag her pack! she’ll go and trag her pack!” Then he uttered a hoarse cry, for, as they saw Kenneth, framed in as it were by the narrow rock, gazing back at them, while the swift gleaming water swept by his legs, they suddenly noted that he started and made a clutch at an overhanging root which came away in his hands, while the stone upon which he was standing tottered over and disappeared in the rushing water.