Kenneth gulped down his tears, patted her hand, and rushed away.
“Come on, Kooran,” he cried. “Oh! Kooran, let us run; my heart feels breaking.”
He took his way across the moor in a different direction from that in which he had come. The storm had abated somewhat. The wind had gone down, and the moon shone out now and then from a rift in the clouds.
He determined to take the shortest cut to Dugald’s house, though there would be the stream to ford, and it must be big and swollen. Never mind; he would try it.
He soon reached a scattered kind of wood of stunted trees; there was no pathway through it, but he guided himself by the moon and kept going downhill. He would thus strike the river, and keeping on by its banks, ford wherever he could.
Nothing could be easier. So he said to himself, and on he went. It was very cold; and though the wind was not so fierce, it moaned and sighed most mournfully through the trees in this wood. Even Kooran started sometimes, as a spruce or Scottish fir tree would suddenly free itself from its burden of snow as if it were a living thing, free itself with a rushing, crackling sort of sound, and stand forth among its fellows dark and spectre-like.
Kenneth had gone quite a long way, but still no stream came in sight. He listened for the sound of running water over and over again, and just as often he seemed to hear it, and went in that direction, but found it must be only wind after all.
He grew tired all at once, tired, weak, and faint, and sat down on a tree stump, and Kooran came and licked his cheek with his soft warm tongue. He placed one hand in the dog’s mane, as if to steady himself, for his head began to swim.
“I must go on, though,” he muttered to himself. “Poor old Nancy. The doctor. I’ll soon be back—I—”
He said no more for a time. He had fainted. When he recovered, he started at once to his feet.