True to his word, when Kenneth had driven his sheep into their fold for the night, and had eaten his supper at his mother’s fireside, then, instead of taking down his books and lying down on the great wooden dais to read by the light of the little black whale-oil lamp, with its wicks of peeled and dried rushes, he got up whistled to Kooran, and said to his mother,—
“I’m going down the glen, mother.”
“Dinna be lang, laddie, dinna be lang,” was all his mother said.
It was a clear moonlight night, all the brighter stars were shining, and there was hardly a cloud to be seen.
Kenneth had two long Scotch miles to walk, down into a thicket of fir trees first, across a rustic bridge, under which the brown stream was dashing and swirling and ever and anon breaking itself into foam against the boulders. It was very dark down here, but Kenneth was soon away out into the open country again, and the roar of the river was no more heard. By-and-bye the road led through a wood of oak, ash, and elm trees, with now and then the dark head of a pine tree shooting high up into the sky. The moonlight showed in patches here all along the road, there was the sound of falling water not far off, mingling with the whispering of the wind among the leaves, now crisp with the sunshine of the long bright summer, and there was occasionally the mournful cry of the brown owl, which made Kenneth feel lonesome and “eerie,” and he was not sorry when he was clear of that dark gloomy wood, and saw up on a hillside the light shining yellow through the blind of Keeper McCrane’s cottage.
A black retriever came rushing down, growling and showing his teeth, but when he saw it was Kenneth he wagged his bell-rope of a tail, and bade him and Kooran welcome.
Kenneth left his dog in the garden to dance and caper about with the retriever. No doubt Kooran told this black dog all about the flying rats. Kenneth just opened the door and walked straight in.
Both Dugald and his young wife jumped up from their seats beside the fire, and welcomed Kenneth, and their only boy, a wonderful little fellow of some nine or ten summers old, with hair not unlike in colour to a bundle of oaten straw, got out of bed and ran to pull Kenneth by the jacket, without waiting to dress.
Dugald and his wife and boy all listened with wondering eyes to the story of the fairy knoll.
“Bless me, dear laddie,” said Mrs McCrane, “were you no’ afraid to venture in?”