“Then you must whistle him up; Kooran will look after the sheep by himself, but Shot will lead him into temptation. Besides, the sheep don’t know Shot. Whistle, Archie, whistle, man.”
Archie put four fingers in his mouth and emitted a scream as shrill as the scream of the great whaup. (The curlew.) In a moment more Shot was coming tearing along through the heather.
And with him was Kooran.
“What do you want, Kooran?”
Kooran threw himself in a pleading attitude at his master’s feet, looked up with brown, melting, pleading eyes, and wagged his tail.
“Oh! I know, dear doggie,” said Kenneth; “you want your dinner, because you know we’ll be away all day.”
Kooran jumped and capered and danced and barked, and Kenneth rolled a piece of cake and a bit of cheese in a morsel of paper and handed it to the dog.
“Keep the koorichan,” (sheep) “well together, doggie,” he said; “and don’t take your dinner for an hour yet.”
Kooran gave his tail a few farewell wags and galloped off, but as soon as he was in sight of the flock and out of sight of his master, he lay down and ate his dinner right up at once. He ate the cheese first, because it smelt so nice, and then he ate the cake.
Away went Archie and Kenneth and Shot. It didn’t take them long to gallop through the heather and furze. Of course the furze made their bare knees bleed, but they did not mind that.