"Maybe ye wunda juist say that I am what ye might call a learned man, nor do I set myself up for an authority on law and doctrine, like Black Ewan owerby at Lochiell. But at least, for every good milch cow in his byres there are ten in mine, and never a Sassenach bonnet-laird comes to Keppoch to claim them. So ye see, so muckle education has not been thrown away on me."
At this moment three hungry-looking loons came down the side of a glen, wading waist-deep among the heather, and driving a small, shaggy Highland cow before them, little bigger than a lowland sheep.
"Ah, good lads," he cried, "plaided men, carriers of the buckler, where gat ye that ane?"
The nearest man cried something that sounded like
"Deil-a-mony-mae!" whereat Keppoch laughed and nodded his head.
The small cow joined the herd, and was soon racing up the long glen towards the north. But the incident was not ended, for before they had gone far over the heather a woman came tearing down the hill-side, and flinging herself down at Keppoch's feet, she clasped him by the legs and kissed the hem of his tartan in an agony of supplication.
"Some blood-feud," thought Wat, as he listened to the frenzied outpouring of appeal. Keppoch stood awkwardly enough, listening at first frowningly, and then with some signs of yielding in his brow, the sight of which made the woman yet more earnest.
After a moment's thought he looked up and cried some direction to the clansmen who followed the cattle ahead of them. The little red cow was turned and came uncertainly along the glen, sometimes roaring back to the herd and at other times casting up her head to look for her own well-noted landmarks. As soon, however, as she saw the woman, the cow ran to her like a dog and nuzzled a wet foam-flecked mouth into her mistress's bosom.
The woman again clasped Keppoch's hand, kissing it over and over and calling down blessings upon him. Then right briskly she took the heather, skipping along the side of the hill with a light well-accustomed foot, the little red cow following her as closely as a dog, leaping runnels of water and skirting perilous screes on the way to her native pastures.
"What might all this be?" asked Scarlett.