Scene: Kenneth at home in his mother's humble cot. A fire of peats and wood burning on the low hearth. Kenneth's mother reading the good Book with spectacles on her eyes. Kenneth leading also at the other side of the fire. Above the mantelpiece a black iron oil lamp is burning, with old-fashioned wicks made from peeled and dried rushes. Between the pair, his head on his paws, Kooran is lying. He is asleep, and probably dreaming of the sheep that he cannot get to enter the "fauld," for he is emitting little sharp cheeping barks, as dogs often do when they dream. Kenneth gets up at last and reaches down his plaid and crook. "Dear laddie," says his mother, "you're surely not going out to-night!" Kooran jumps up and shakes himself. "Yes, mother; I must," is the quiet reply. "I had a strange dream about poor Nancy last night. She has been ill, you know, and I haven't called for three days." "But in such a night, laddie! Listen to the wind! Hear how the snow and the hail are beating on the window!" Kenneth did listen. It was indeed a fearful night. The wind was sighing and crying through every cranny of the window, and shaking the sash; it was howling round the chimney, and wailing through the keyhole of the door. Snow was sifting in underneath the door, too, and lying along the floor like a stripe of light. Kenneth drew his plaid closer round him. "I must go, mother," he said; "I could not sleep to-night if I didn't. "Don't be uneasy about me even if I don't return till morning. I may stay all night at Dugald's." When Kenneth opened the door he was almost driven back with the force of the wind, and almost suffocated with the soft, powdery, drifting snow. But he closed the door quickly after him and marched boldly on down the glen, rolling the end of his plaid about his neck, and at times having even to breathe through a single fold of it to prevent suffocation. It was now well on in January. There had been but little snow all the winter, but this storm came on sharp and sudden. All day gigantic masses of cloud had been driving hurriedly over the sky on the wings of an easterly wind; the ground was as hard as adamant, and towards sunset the snow had begun to fall. But it took no time to settle on the bare ground; it was blown on and heaped wherever there was a bit of shelter from the fierce east wind. So it lay under the hedges and dykes, and on the lee-side of trees, and deep down in the ravines, and under banks and rocks, and across the road here and there in rifts like frozen waves of the ocean. The wind howled terribly across the moorland. There was a moon, but it gave little light. Kooran knew, however, where his master was going, and went feathering on in front, stopping now and then to turn round and give a little sharp encouraging bark to his sturdy young master.