It is gloomy enough in the ravine below, but here the sun is brightly shining, and primroses are blooming on the borders, and the blue myosotis that rivals the noonday sky in the brightness of its colour. On a wooden dais, near the keeper's door, Kenneth is lying rolled in his plaid and propped up with pillows. On the arm of the dais old Nancy's cat is seated, blinking in the sunshine and singing. On the pathway is Kooran, and book in hand--'tis Burns's poems--Archie is seated on a stone. Kenneth's mother comes out and stands beside her boy, smiling and talking for a little, then goes in again. Dugald himself comes up the path, gun on shoulder, singing low, but he finishes the line in a louder voice when he sees Kenneth. "Ah, lad! out once more," he cries joyfully. "Och, man! it's myself that is glad to see you." The moisture had gathered in the honest fellow's eye. Kenneth smiled faintly. "You'll soon see me on foot again, the doctor says." "But, man, if I live to be as auld as Methuselah, I'll never forget that dreary nicht your Kooran came howling to the door. He would hardly give me time to put my plaid on, and then he led me away and away to Brownie's Howe, and I found your body--there seemed no life in it--and carried you hame here on my shoulder. "Ay, and Kooran has never left ye one hour since then, nor Nancy's cat either. She came here the very day after Nancy's funeral. Poor auld Nancy! How quietly she wore away. And how sensible she was to the last. And she told me a story about the laird, our dear laird McGregor, that you maunna hear noo, Kenneth. Good-bye. I'm off to the hills. Mind to keep the wind from him, Archie." "How I should like to go too, Archie," said Kenneth. "Oh!" said the boy, "that will soon be now. And oh! how bonnie the woods are, and the birds have all begun to build." "Are the woods very bonnie, Archie?" "Oh! delightful," cried the boy. "The moss is so soft and green under the trees. The wild flowers are creeping out and blowing on the banks. The pine trees are all stuck over with long white-green fingers." "I know," said Kenneth. "The birch tree stems are whiter than ever I saw them, just like silver, Kennie." "Yes." "And their branches are trailing down with the weight of their bonnie wee glittering leaves." "Yes, yes." "Then the needles on the larch trees were never so soft and green before, I'm sure, and they are just covered with red tassels." "Yes." "And the rowan trees [Rowan tree--the mountain ash] are covered with white flowers. What lots of scarlet roddans they'll have in autumn! And the birds are all building, as I said. I have a hoody-craw's nest in a Scotch fir in Alva, and a kestrel's in a terribly tall tree at Aultmore. That magpie is building a brand-new nest; I knew she'd have to." "Well?" "Well, there are five eggs in a laverock's among the corn, and I know where there is a ptarmigan's and a whaup's, far away up among the mountains."