I had been pensive when I started, I was now perplexed. No wonder, for
night was coming on. Stars were glinting out in the east, a big brown
owl flew close over me, with a most melancholy shriek of
"tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo," that made my blood feel cold.
_I was lost_!
Yes, but what had I to fear? I thought I had been lost before, lost in
Afric wilds, on prairie lands, and in Greenland mists: was I going to be
baffled by a Highland forest and moorland?
"Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!"
A sweet spirit of melancholy is very nice, but one may have too much of
it.
"Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo!"
Bother the bird. His wings too are flapping on the night air, and
rustling as they say evil spirits do.
The trees grow more uncanny-looking every minute, and after going on and
on for fully twenty minutes more, these ghostly ill-omened pines
positively seem to advance to meet me, and wave their gnarled arms in
the starlit air as I pass.
"Tu-whit-tu-whoo-oo-oo."
Horrible!
"Bob, my boy, bark, speak, and scare that awful bird."
"Wowff--wowff--wowff!"
Listen! Hark!
At no great distance we can hear the sharp "Yap! yap! woo-oo" of a
shepherd's collie. No mistaking it. It cannot be a fox, and there are
no wolves about.
I take my bearings by a star that shines over the place from which the
barking appeared to come, and Bob and I make straight in that direction.
To our great joy and relief, we presently emerge from among the
black-branched uncanny trees, and on the moor, at no great distance, see
a light streaming from the open door of a hut.
A creature very like a wolf, with hair all on end, comes grumbling and
yelping in a most threatening way to meet us.
"Let me settle him," says Bob.
"No, Bob," I reply. "He is watching his master's house. He is right."
But one glance at Bob is enough for the collie. He disappears--goes
bounding away over the hill, evidently to seek his master, for when we
enter the one-roomed hut we find it deserted.
There is a bright fire on a low hearth, however, and the smoke finds its
way up a real chimney, and not through a hole in the roof, as is the
case so often in Highland shepherd huts. There is a pot hanging over
the fire, simmering away slowly, and raising its lid a little every now
and then to emit a whiff of steam, so savoury that Master Bob begins to
lick his lips, and seems to wonder that I do not at once proceed to have
supper.