Harry is back in the Highlands at last. He has come a good two hours earlier than he expected. But he does not mind that He likes to walk slowly on towards the home of his boyhood. Every little cottage, every hill—the hills are all heather-clad, for the summer’s bloom bedecks them—every wood, ay, every tree recalls some sweet memory of the bygone.
He is still within half a mile of Beaufort when he sees a dog.
It is his own.
It is Eily.
She has been out hunting for stoats at the hedge-foot.
He calls her by name. She stops and stares, bewildered for a moment, then with a few joyful bounds she is at him. She is at him, and on him, and round him, and round him all at once apparently.
Her dear old master risen from the dead!! She can hardly believe her eyes, and is fain to stand a little way off and bark at him for very joy. Then off she flies homewards, to tell that she has found her master.
So that Harry’s father, bareheaded and with his newspaper in his hand, but hale and hearty as of yore, and Harry’s mother, more fragile and older-looking, are both at the gate to welcome him.
And behind them comes old Yonitch to shake her dear boy by the hand.
Harry has a companion, whom he now introduces, and he is no less a personage than Raggy himself.