"Ha! ha! yes," he cried, tearing himself away from gloomy thoughts. "We'll have hope. We won't think about it, will we? Ha! ha! no, we won't think about it. And I'll never say a single word to my mother about the matter. It _may_ pass, you know. "And so," he continued, "you really like my cave. Well, little Archie, your son, will often be here with me. And you must come too, and we'll have such fun. I wonder if the ptarmigans will build next year in the same place as they did last. Mind when the snow falls you'll take me for a day's white hare hunting, won't you? It is such grand sport, and you promised, you know. What tune did you say I was to play? Something merry. Oh! yes, I know--" Kenneth recovered his flute from among the brackens as he spoke, and rattled off into as merry a reel as ever witches danced to in "Alloway's auld haunted kirk." "First-rate!" cried Duncan, clapping his hands, while even Kooran barked for joy, and Shot's voice gave gladsome echo at the cave's mouth. "First-rate! man; that's the kind o' music to banish the bogies. Losh! Kennie, music like that would have made Methuselah himsel' grow young again. That it would." It was late that evening ere the two friends found themselves down the glen again, but when they bade each other good-night and walked briskly homewards there was not a thought in their hearts of evil to come; they were each as happy as the lark that carols o'er spring corn. CHAPTER FIVE. A DAY IN THE WILDS. "My heather land, my heather land, Though fairer lands there be, Thy gowany braes in early days Were gowden ways to me." Thom. Scene: The fairy's glen high up among the mountains. Kenneth seated, book in hand, on the top of the fairy knoll, which stands out strangely green against the purples and browns which surround it. Kenneth is alone. Kooran is away down beneath, minding the sheep. The shepherd-boy lays down the book at last, or rather he drops it down the chimney of his cave, and it falls on the carpet of brackens beneath. Then he takes his crook, and goes slowly down the strath. This was a Saturday forenoon, and Kenneth and his little friend Archie McCrane were going on a long round of pleasure. Ha! yonder comes Archie. Or rather, yonder suddenly doth he appear. He comes straight up out of the centre of a bush of furze, in quite a startling kind of way.