“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said the keeper. “We’ll go up the glen and see the old witch wife, Nancy Dobbell. She can tell us all about it. They tell me she knows everything that ever happened for a hundred years back and more.”
“Will she no’ be in bed?” said his wife.
“In bed?” said Dugald. “Not she. She never goes to bed till ‘the wee short hour ayont the twal,’ and there is no saying what she may be doing till then.”
“Well, let us go,” cried Kenneth, starting up.
One glance at the walls of the room in Dugald’s cottage, that did duty as both kitchen and dining-hall, would have given a stranger an insight into both the character and calling of the chief inmate. Never a picture adorned the room, but dried grasses and ferns did duty instead, and here were the skins of every kind of wild animal and bird to be found in the wilds of the Scottish Highlands, the foumart or polecat, the whitterit or weasel, the wild cat and fox, ptarmigan, plovers of every kind, including the great whaup or curlew, hawks, owls, and even the golden-headed eagle itself stood stuffed in a corner, with glaring fiery eyes and wings half outspread.
“Come,” said Dugald.
And away went the keeper and Kenneth, the two dogs following closely at their masters’ heels, as if to protect them from all harm.