Chapter Five.
A Day in the Wilds.
“My heather land, my heather land,
Though fairer lands there be,
Thy gowany braes in early days
Were gowden ways to me.”
Thom.
Scene: The fairy’s glen high up among the mountains. Kenneth seated, book in hand, on the top of the fairy knoll, which stands out strangely green against the purples and browns which surround it. Kenneth is alone. Kooran is away down beneath, minding the sheep. The shepherd-boy lays down the book at last, or rather he drops it down the chimney of his cave, and it falls on the carpet of brackens beneath. Then he takes his crook, and goes slowly down the strath.
This was a Saturday forenoon, and Kenneth and his little friend Archie McCrane were going on a long round of pleasure.
Ha! yonder comes Archie. Or rather, yonder suddenly doth he appear. He comes straight up out of the centre of a bush of furze, in quite a startling kind of way.
Archie is eleven years of age, though very tiny, but very strong, and as hard as an Arab. No fat about Archie. His face and bare neck and breast and thorn-scratched knees are as red as if recently rubbed with brick-dust. There isn’t a rent or hole in either his jacket or kilt, but woe is me, it is pretty nearly all patches; it is mother’s work every night to mend the rents Archie makes in his clothes. Archie is, of course, his mother’s darling. She even takes pains to make him pretty. She prides herself even in his beautiful hair. His hair is one of Archie’s strong points. Mind, he wears no bonnet (cap), never did and never would. He owns one, but always forgets to put it on. So his soft golden hair is cut across above the brows, and hangs in wavy luxuriance over his shoulders. I said golden, but it is more straw colour, and bleached on the top almost white.
He is a singular lad, Archie, has a half-wild, half-frightened look in his face; in fact, take him all in all, he is quite in keeping with the romantic surroundings.
“I’ve got him,” Archie said.