"He will know the way," Elsie cried, with delight. "Come on, Duncan; let's run and ask him."
"You run, Elsie. I'll wait till you come back," Duncan said, wearily. It was very unusual for him to hang behind, but Elsie was too eager to notice it. She left him sitting by the roadside, and flew after the shepherd.
"The way to Killochrie? Weel, you just keep to the road right away till it runs into another one, an' that'll take you straight through; but it's a long, long way to walk."
The man was engaged in eating a large piece of bread and cheese. Elsie, who was very hungry, eyed it longingly.
"Ye look a wee bit starved," the man said.
"We'll be getting some food at Killochrie," Elsie said, evasively.
"I did hear last night that there was two children lost off Dunster Moor—stolen, they do say. I suppose you bain't one of them?" the man continued, eyeing her curiously "Was dressed in plaid frock and cloth jacket. That ain't you, any way."
"We live at Killochrie," Elsie said quickly and wickedly, not hesitating to conceal the truth, and to tell a falsehood to do so. "We've come farther than we should, and I wasn't quite sure of the way."
"Aweel! aweel!" the man said, in his slow northern fashion. "It's a good thing ye're not lost away from your natural home, which I'd be sorry to think of happening to any bairn. It's a goodish bit out of my road, but I'd like to carry the poor bairnies back to their mother, wherever she be."
Elsie waited to hear no more. She bade the man a hasty "Good-day," and ran off. How strange it was that this out-of-the-way shepherd should have heard the tale, and yet not so strange when one thinks how quickly such a tale spreads far and near, and how few other concerns the shepherd had to drive it from his mind. Already the news of the lost children was being discussed in every whiskey-shop and cottage. It had reached the little village three miles out of Killochrie, where the shepherd's wife lived. And if the children had been elsewhere than in the crofter's lonely cottage they must have been discovered, as there was every chance that they would be before long.