Scene: The fairy glen once more, and in the background the fairy knoll. Kenneth and Archie, both looking very sad, are in the foreground by a new-made grave. Kenneth has been planting a little tree there, only a young Scotch pine, dug from the moor, a treelet that had grown from a cone which the rooks had fetched from Alva’s gloomy forest. Kenneth has planted the tree, and the spade has dropped from his fingers and fallen among the heather.
Archie’s dog Shot is standing near. He has been watching all the proceedings. Watching, and probably wondering. For dogs do think.
But where is Kooran? Kooran is under the sod. His bonnie brown eyes have closed for ever; his faithful heart will never feel love or friendship more—it has ceased to beat. Nor cry of wild bird on the mountain, nor plaintive bleat of lamb, no, nor his master’s voice, will ever move him again.
“I canna but believe,” says Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, “that dogs hae sowls.”
There are many more believe with you, dear Hogg.
But about honest Kooran. When dogs get old, you know—and Kooran had got old before he died—a slight stiffness may be noticed in their gait. I am positive that they begin to wonder what ails them. Wonder why they cannot run so fast as they used to, in the good days of yore. Wonder why they get tired and out of breath so soon. Wonder, too, why master speaks so low, or why the sheep do not bleat so loudly or the birds sing so much as they used to. They do not know that this is only failure in their own powers of hearing. And they wonder also why the trees and grass and hedgerows have ceased to be so bright and green, even in spring-time, as once they were; why master’s face seems dimmer. They cannot now stand the cold so well; they seem to want a thicker coat, but alas! the coat grows thinner. They would fain seek the shelter of indoors, even curl up on the hearthrug. How seldom do they get the chance! How often they receive the brutal kick when they most need comfort!
Then comes the day when they feel the cold no longer.
It had never occurred to Kenneth that some time or other Kooran and he must part—that Kooran must die. He was ever kind and attentive to this faithful friend of his; he never forgot him. He might have been excused if he had, for the scenes at the eviction and the burning of the glen were awful enough, in all conscience, to have driven everything else out of the boy’s head.
Of all the houses in the glen, that alone of Kenneth’s mother had been spared. Not that she meant to accept the favour thus offered her and stay on. Both she and Kenneth were far too proud for that. But at the cottage they lived for a time. And at the cottage Kooran died.