The keeper had been a silent spectator of the sad scene. At last he turned to Kirsty, and brushing a tear from his eye, he said, in a husky voice—"Kirsty, woman, I've whiles afore rued yon dark nicht's work sore eneuch, and all that came o't, but I niver rued it sae muckle as I do the nicht."
"Dinna say nae mair, Alaster Dingwall," replied Kirsty, holding out her hand. "I'll no say that it wasna sair upo' me for mony a day, but I see it a' the nicht. Ye were jist the instrument in His hands for sendin' the puir prodigal safe hame til the Father's hoose. Will you no come intilt yersel', man? The far countrie o' sin is an unca lonesome place, Alaster Dingwall," and Kirsty laid her hand on his arm, and looked earnestly into his face.
"It's no easy wark for an auld sinner like me, Kirsty; but, I'll try," Dingwall replied, as he glanced kindly and pityingly at the orphan boy, and lifted him from his dead mother's side.
"Noo, keeper, ye and Morag mauna bide a minute longer. The puir lassie maun be deid tired," said Kirsty, rousing herself to think what must be done next. "I'se watch aside the corp; and maybe, when the morn's come, ye'll hae the kindness to speir gin the wricht i' the village will come ootby here, and we'll lay her in her lang hame, and the puir laddie will come hame and bide wi' me."
The keeper would not hear of leaving her, and Morag seated herself on the dyke, saying quietly, "I canna be goin' home and leavin' Kirsty, father."
The poor boy seemed so faint from grief and fasting, that Dingwall at last decided to take him away from the sorrowful scene, and to leave Morag, who determinately clung to her old friend.
Kenneth stood gazing mournfully at the silent form, murmuring, "Mother, mother!" in a low monotone of agony. He would not be persuaded to quit the spot till Kirsty unfastened the tartan plaid from the stakes, and laying it reverently on the body, she covered the dead face out of sight. And as she unwound the plaid from its fastenings, she remembered with a sharp pang of sorrow the morning on which she had last seen that old plaid. While the keeper and Kenneth are wandering through the fir-wood on their way to the shieling among the crags, and the old woman, with Morag by her side, keeps her strange, lonely watch beside the dead, we shall explain why it was so terrible for the keeper to remember, and so difficult for Kirsty to forget, the events of a certain night long years ago, which had driven the older Kenneth from the Glen an outlawed man, and left his mother a desolate, childless woman.
Kirsty's husband had been the village smith. He was a much-liked and respected inhabitant of the little hamlet. He was suddenly cut off by fever at a comparatively early age, leaving his wife one son, who was henceforth to be her sole earthly hope and care. The smith had been a sober and diligent man, and Kirsty was a frugal housewife, so a little money was saved, and the widow had been able to move to the pretty cottage in the Glen, which had been her home ever since.
Kirsty had one earthly ambition, and one which she shared in common with many a Scotch peasant—namely, that her son should become a scholar. This desire seemed, however, to meet with no response from the boy himself. He hated books, and loved, above all things, to roam about the Glen, finding his pleasure there, frequently, when he should have been at school in the village. Thither every quarter-day his mother duly went, full of anxiety to hear about his progress, and with the school fees wrapt in a corner of her pocket-handkerchief, while a small offering for the schoolmaster's wife, from the garden or barn-yard, was never forgotten. But she always returned from these visits crestfallen and grieved. "He does not take to his books, Mrs. Macpherson; I fear we'll never be able to make a scholar of him," the parish schoolmaster would say, shaking his head, and adding, as he noticed the mother's disappointed face, "He's a fine, manly, truthful boy, though; you'll find he will be good for something yet."
But Kirsty was not satisfied, and went on praying that God would give her son a hearing ear and an understanding heart in things intellectual and spiritual. And so the years of boyhood passed, and Kenneth grew up a great anxiety to his widowed mother. Sometimes he would leave home for whole nights and days of rambling among the hills with other lads. He was an immense favorite among his companions, and their chosen leader in every wild exploit. Bold and frank and fearless he certainly was, and possessed much of seeming unselfishness, but it was a quality of a very different kind from that which his mother practised at home. Nobody could wile so many trouts from the river as Kenneth; and nobody so generously shared his basketful among his comrades. He knew every foot of the Glen by heart, every lonely pass, each deceptive bog. He had set his heart on being a gamekeeper, but his mother looked upon it as an idle trade, and always hoped that he might yet show some leaning towards another employment.