When tired roaming about in the wilds, the two boys sat down and had dinner.
Then they crossed the wide moorland to Nancy’s lonely cottage.
Nancy was delighted to see them. She said they must be hungry. But the boys assured her that they were not, because they had had plenty of bread and cheese. But Nancy put down her knitting and warmed some heather ale for them, and sweetened it, and switched two new-laid eggs, and mixed those in it, and made the boys drink the harmless and delicious beverage.
Then she took up her knitting again, and click, click, clickety-click, went the wires the while she told them strange old-world stories and tales of fairies and kelpies.
The boys were entranced, and it was nearly dark when they left Nancy’s cottage and betook themselves to the glen. Kooran was very pleased to see them back, and helped them to fold the sheep; then the whole four—that is, Kenneth and Archie and Kooran and Shot—went up the fairy glen to the fairy knoll and the smugglers’ cave.
Kenneth lit the lamp; then he lit a fire out of doors and hung over a pot from a tripod, quite gipsy fashion.
Kenneth was a capital cook, and made a rabbit stew that a king might have eaten. So both boys supped royally, and the dogs had the bones.
Then the things were cleared away, and down lay Archie on the dais, to listen to Kenneth reading the “Tales of the Borders.”
On the whole, they had spent a most delightful day of it. But it was only one of many, for Saturday was Kenneth’s own day, and Archie was his constant companion.
And so the autumn wore away among these, peaceful glens. The days grew shorter and shorter, the frosts fell morning and night, and winds moaned through trees leafless and bare. The sheep were folded now in fields on the lower lands, and Kenneth had more time for his studies. But every evening found Archie and him in their cave in the fairy knoll.