“Boboon, Boboon, oh! come home to the wood, Boboon!”
“Am not I the poor caged one?” said Boboon to himself, and he ran in that he might hear no more.
It was the same the next night and the next, and it looked like going on without end. Ever the wanderers coming at night to the wall and craving their head to come out. And one night they threw over a winged black-cock, that fell with beating feathers at Boboon's feet as he stood in the dark listening to the swart Macdonalds whining outbye.
He picked up the bird and ran kind fingers through its feathers. The heat coursed in its breast and burned to a fever in its wounded oxter. Its little heart beat on Boboon's thumb like a drumstick.
“Poor bird!” said he; “well I ken where ye came from, and the merry times ye had. Ye hatched in the braes of Ben Bhuidhe, and clucked on the reedy places round about the side of that tall hill. Before your keen eyes in the morning was the Dubh Loch, and the Shira—winding like a silver belt. Sure am I ye took wing for it with the day, and over Stuc Scardan to Aora Glen to make merry among your mates in the heather and the fern. Oh! choillich-dhuibh, choillich-dhuibh, hard's our fate with broken wings and the heart still strong!”
He thrawed the bird's neck, and then went over the wall to join his clan.
His second chance ended no better. He was back in a new kilt and jacket a twelvemonth later, and this time the captain tried the trick of a dog's freedom—oat on the road as he liked by day, but kennel at night.
One day Boboon was on his master's errand round Stron. It was the spring of the year. The shore, at the half-ebb, was clean and sweet, and the tide lapped at the edge as soft as a cat at milk.
Going round Stron on the hard yellow road, he got to think of the sea's good fortune,—of the many bays it wandered into by night or day; of its friendship with far-out forelands, and its brisk quarrels with the black rocks. Here was no dyke at any time, but all freedom, the restlessness and the roaming, sleep or song as the mood had it, and the ploys with galleys and gabberts; the cheery halloo of the winds and the waving of branches on foreign isles to welcome one.
The road opened before him in short swatches—the sort of road a wanderer likes, with not too much of it to be seen at one look. In the hazel-wood by the way the bark of the young trees glistened like brass; thin new switches shot out straight as shelisters.