Then he crossed over to the cattle-sheds. The snow was crisp under foot. His feet went through the light drift which had fallen during the night, and crackled frostily upon the older and harder crust. At the barn, Kit paused to put fresh straw in his iron-shod clogs. Fresh straw every morning in the bottom of one's clogs is a great luxury. It keeps the feet warm. Who can afford a new sole of fleecy wool every morning to his shoe? Kit could, for straw is cheap, and even his aunt did not grudge a handful. Not that it would have mattered if she had. The cattle rattled their chains in a friendly and companionable way as he crossed the yard, Tyke following a little more sedately than before. Kit's first morning job was to fodder the cattle. He went to the hay-mow and carried a great armful of fodder, filling the manger before the bullocks, and giving each a friendly pat as he went by. Great Jock, the bull in the pen by himself in the corner, pushed a moist nose over the bars, and dribbled upon Kit with slobbering affection. Kit put down his head and pretended to run at him, whereat Jock, whom nobody else dared go near, beamed upon him with the solemn affection of "bestial"--his great eyes shining in the light of the lamp with unlovely but genuine affection. Then came the cows' turn. Kit Kennedy took a milking-pail, which he would have called a luggie, set his knee to Crummie, his favourite, who was munching her fodder, and soon had a warm draught. He pledged her in her own milk, wishing her good health and many happy returns. Then, for his aunt's sake, he carefully wiped the luggie dry, and set it where he had found it. He had got his breakfast--no mean or poor one. But he did not doubt that he was, as his aunt had said, "a lazy, deceitful, thieving hound." Kit Kennedy came out of the byre, and trudged away out over the field at the back of the barn, to the sheep in the park. He heard one of them cough as a human being does behind his hand. The lantern threw dancing reflections on the snow. Tyke grovelled and rolled in the light drift, barking loudly. He bit at his own tail. Kit set down the lantern, and fell upon him for a tussle. The two of them had rolled one another into a snowdrift in exactly ten seconds, from which they rose glowing with heat--the heat of young things when the blood runs fast. Tyke, being excited, scoured away wildly, and circled the park at a hand-gallop before his return. But Kit only lifted the lantern and made for the turnip-pits.