Kenneth put his instrument together and commenced. Shot sat down on the brackens and commenced too. Dugald turned Shot out of the cave, but Kooran had better manners and was allowed to stay. It was the "Flowers o' the Forest" that Kenneth played, and to this sweetly mournful air Dugald listened entranced. "Silly Dugald!" some would say, for his very eyes were moist. "Ah! Kennie, man," he said at last, "I hope you may never live to play that dear auld lilt in a foreign land with the tears rinnin' o'er your face." "What mean ye, Dugald?" Kenneth said. "Mean?" cried Dugald almost fiercely. "Why, this, lad: that news came to-day to the clachan that our auld laird, that has ever been sae kind to us, is bankrupt, and has sold his fine estate to an American--to a foreigner, Kennie." "Don't say so?" "But I do say so, and I fear it's an owertrue tale, lad. The place that knows us noo may soon know us no more. For they tell me he is going to evict the tenants, pull the clachan down, and turn our bonnie glen into a forest for deer, knock doon the dear auld kirk, Kennie, that you and I were christened in, and have sung psalms in Sunday after Sunday, knock doon our kirk, give our roofs to the flames,--ay, Kennie, and level the graves o' those we hold dear!" "I really cannot believe all this, Dugald. Oh! it would kill my mother." "Poor laddie!" said Dugald, laying his hand kindly on Kenneth's shoulder. "Poor laddie! Grief has been your share in the world of late. Two or three years ago, when your father lived, what a merry boy you were! But your father, once a thrifty crofter, had been reduced to a humble shepherd, and when that broke his heart, and the Lord took him, his brave boy Kennie left school and tended the sheep, and his industry supports a widowed mother. Ay, lad, Kennie, it will gang hard on you and hard on your mother to leave Glen Alva." Kenneth looked the picture of despair. His flute had fallen from his hand, and lay unheeded among the brackens. "To leave my mother," he muttered, speaking apparently to himself, "to go into a foreign land, that were bad, but to know that the very glen itself was altered, the old kirk roofless, the houses heaps of ruins, to have nothing to look back to, nothing at home to love--oh! Duncan, Duncan, that wouldn't be absence from home; it would be banishment, Duncan, banishment and exile." "Let us try no' to think about it, Kennie. Dinna look so woe-begone, man, or you'll mak' me sorry that I've told you." The boy turned quickly round. "Oh! but say you've been but joking. Say it is not true, Duncan." "Oh hey!" was Duncan's answer--a big sigh, that was all. "But you know," said Duncan, after a pause, "nobody is sure yet of anything." The boy laughed now.