But when great drops of rain began to fall, they were glad to be told by the ghillie that there was the Kelpie’s can not far off, and so thither they followed the lad, and glad was Peggy when she found herself sheltered from the pitiless storm.
Fitzroy and Gourmand felt very anxious indeed when evening deepened into darkness about ten that night, and still the children did not come.
Seek them they must, and so they rolled themselves in Highland plaids, and accompanied by two sturdy ghillies as guides, set off to find the lake, accompanied by Ralph.
About half way to the glen they met little Stuart, the children’s ghillie. He was dragging himself along, and was covered with blood and mud.
He was dazed, too; but at last, sentence by sentence, they managed to get all the story out of him, and a sad and melancholy one it was.
CHAPTER IX.
Bloodhound on the Trail.
“OCH! yes, to be surely, they were all nearly murdered evermore, the bit laddie Shonnie was killed dead whateffer, and tied to a tree so he shouldn’t run away at all, and the bit bonnie lassie was rowed (rolled) in a plaidie and carriet away. Ochne! Ochne!”
“And who did this terrible thing?”
Stuart wasn’t sure. First he thought they were men, and then he thought they were beasties, for their faces were all black and hairy, but now he believed they were “just water-kelpies and nothing else, forbye, whateffer.”
They found the tarn at last. There is practically no night in Scotland north, at this season, and the sky having cleared now, they found poor Johnnie soon enough, tied by ropes to a pine tree.