“Doing well. No more late lambs. No more feeble dying ones.”
The keeper shouldered his gun; the two dogs speedily tore up the grass where the field-mouse had been singing. They destroyed all her tunnels and mossy lanes, but they hadn’t time to unearth the mouse herself.
Away up over the hills went the friends. Up, and up, and up. When on the brow of the mountain they were to cross they must have been fifteen hundred feet above the sea level. Down beneath them the rolling country was slumbering in the misty moonlight, only the river meandered through it all and sparkled like a thread of silver.
It was a near cut they had taken; they had now only to descend a little way, and, behold, they were at the cave.
And soon in it.
“I’ll light the lamp,” said Kenneth, and in a moment more the interior was illuminated.
“Well, I do declare this is grand! Never in this world before had shepherd such a shelter, surely!”
So he well might say. Kenneth had cleaned the cave out, bedded the floor with a carpet of withered brackens, hung a huge oil lamp in it, which gave light and warmth both, built rude seats round it, made a rude table, and conveyed hither his books, his fishing-gear, and even his flute.
“Isn’t it delightful!” cried Kenneth, laughing till his eyes danced and sparkled in the moonlight.
“Oh! it is grand!” said Dugald, sitting down all the better to view the place.