hill whistling.
V. EVENING IN THE WEE BIT HOOSIE
When he was out of sight, Jean brought in the washing and then it
was time to get supper. Alan helped set the table and kept the
fire bright under the pot, while Jock fed the hens and brought in
the eggs; and when the Shepherd and Tam returned from the hills,
you can imagine how surprised they were to find three children
waiting for them instead of two. At supper the Shepherd had to be
told all the adventures of the day and how it happened that Alan
was wearing the kilts, and by the time it was over you would have
thought they had known each other all their lives. While Jean
cleared away the dishes, the Shepherd drew his chair to the fire
and beckoned Alan to him.
"Come here, laddie," he said, "and give us a look at your
plaidie. It's been lying there in the kist, and I've not seen a
sight of it since I was a lad. It's the Campbell plaid, ye ken,
and I mind once when I was a lad I was on my way home from the
kirk and a hare crossed my path. It's ill luck for a hare to
cross your path, and fine I proved it. I clean forgot it was the
Sabbath and louped the dyke after him. My kiltie caught on a
stone, and there I was hanging upside down. My father loosed me,
but my kiltie was torn and I had to go to bed without my supper
for breaking the Sabbath."
"Is the hole there yet?" asked Jean.
"Na, na;" said the Shepherd. "You didn't think your grandmother
was such a thriftless wifie as that! She mended the hole so that
you could never find where it had been."
He examined fold after fold carefully.
"There, now," he exclaimed at last, "if you want to see mending
that would make you proud to wear it, look at that."
Jean and Jock stuck their heads over his shoulder, and Alan
twisted himself nearly in two trying to see his own back.
"We have a plaid a good deal like this," said Alan, looking
closely at the pattern. "My mother's name was McGregor, but she
has relations named Campbell."
"Are you really a Scotch body, then?" cried Robin with new
interest in Alan. "I thought you were an English boy."
"I live in London," Alan answered, "but my mother's people are
all Scotch, and she loves Scotland. That's one reason why she
sent me up here to be with Eppie McLean."
"Losh, mannie," cried the Shepherd, "if you have Campbell
relatives and your mother's name was McGregor, it's likely you
are a descendant from old Rob Roy himself, and if so, we're all
kinsmen. Inversnaid, where Rob Roy's cave is, is but a few miles
from here, and it was in this very country that he hid himself
among rocks and caves, giving to the poor with his left hand what
he took from the rich with his right. Well, well, laddie, the
old clans are scattered now, but blood is thicker than water
still, and you're welcome to the fireside of your kinsman!"
"Is he really a relation?" cried Jean and Jock eagerly.
"Well," said the Scotchman cautiously, "I'm not saying he is
precisely, but I'm not saying he is not, either. The Campbells
and the McGregors have lived in these parts for better than two
hundred years, and it's not likely that Alan could lay claim to
both names and be no relation at all. If there were still clans,
as there used to be in the old days, we'd all belong to the same
one, and that I do not doubt."
"I'm sure I'd like that," said Alan, and Jock was so delighted
with his new relative that he stood on his head in the middle of
the floor to express his feelings. When the excitement had died
down a bit, Alan drew his stool up beside the Shepherd's knee and
said: "Won't you please tell us about Rob Roy, Cousin Campbell?
If he's an ancestor of mine, I ought to know more about him."
"Oh, do, Father," echoed the Twins, planting their stools beside
the other knee. Even Tam was interested. He sat on the hearth in
front of the Shepherd, looking up into his face as if he
understood every word.
The Shepherd gazed thoughtfully into the fire for a moment; then he
said: "I can tell you what my grandsire told me, and he got it from
his grandsire, so it must be true. In the beginning Rob Roy was as
staunch a man as any, and held his own property like other gentlemen.
Craig Royston was the name of his place, and fine and proud he was of
it, too. He was a gey shrewd man in the cattle-dealing, and his
neighbor, the Duke of Montrose, thinking to benefit his own estate,
lent Rob money to set him up in the trade. There was a pawky rascal
named McDonald who was partner to Rob, and didn't he run away with the
money, leaving Rob in debt to the Duke and nothing to pay him with?
The Duke foreclosed on Rob at once, and took away Craig Royston and
added it to his own estate. You can well believe that Rob was not the
man to take such dealings with patience. If the Duke had not been so
hasty, Rob would more than likely have got hold of McDonald and made
him pay either out of his purse or out of his skin, but he did neither
the one nor the other. Instead he left his home and took his clan with
him into the mountains and became the terror of the whole
country-side."
"Wasn't he a good man?" asked Jean, gazing at her father with
round eyes.
"Well," said the Shepherd, "not just what you'd call pious,
maybe, and it cannot be said that he was aye regular at the kirk.
It's true he never forgot an enemy, but he never forgot a
kindness either and was loyal and true to them that were true to
him."
"What did he do when they weren't true to him?" asked Jock.
"He made them wish they had been," replied the Shepherd mildly.
"But what made the Duke of Montrose take away Craig Royston?"
asked Jock. "Didn't he have a great big place of his own?"
"Aye," answered Robin, "but what difference does that make? The
more land he had, the more land he wanted, the same as other
lairds. Be that as it may, Craig Royston was certainly taken away
from Rob, and a bitter man it made of him."
"Why, it's just like ourselves and the Auld Laird," cried Jean.
"He's going to take away our home from us!"
"It's not just the same, little woman," said the Shepherd, laying
his big brown hand on Jean's small one on his knee. "But the loss
of it hurts just the same. Rob Roy loved Craig Royston no better
than we love this wee bit hoosie."
"But why must you go, then?" asked Alan, his eyes shining with
interest and sympathy.
"You see; lad," answered the Shepherd, "it's like the tale of the
dog in the manger. The Auld Laird will neither use the land nor
let us." He explained about the lease, and when he had finished,
Alan said, "But what will you do when you leave this place?"
"I'm spiering the same question myself," answered the Shepherd.
"As yet I dinna ken."
"I tell you what," shouted Jock, springing to his feet and
knocking over his stool. "Why don't we live in the caves the way
Rob Roy did? If the Crumpets and all the people who have to give
up their homes should band together in a clan and hide themselves
in the glen, the Auld Laird could send all the Mr. Craigies and
Angus Niels in the world after us and they'd never get us!"
The Shepherd smiled and shook his head. "The time for that has
gone by," he said sadly. "Na, na, we must just submit. But one
thing I do know, and that is, we'll not seek a place with the
Laird of Kinross. They say he will let his land to none but
members of the Established Church, and I'll not give up my
religion for any man not if I'm forever walking the world!"
"But come, now," he went on, seeing them downcast, "you all have
faces on you as long as a summer Sabbath. Cheer up, and I'll tell
you a tale my grandfather told me of the water cow of Loch Leven.
You mind the song says, 'The Campbells are coming from bonnie
Loch Leven.' Well, it was around that loch that the Campbells
pastured their cattle. One day when my grandsire was a young lad
he was playing with some other children on the pastures near the
shore, when all of a sudden what should they see among their own
cows but a fine young dun-colored heifer without any horns. She
was lying by herself on the green grass, chewing her cud and
looking so gentle and pretty that the children played around her
without fear. They wound a wreath of daisies and put it on her
neck, and then they got on her back. The cow stretched out longer
and longer to make room for them until they were all on her back
except my grandsire. Then all of a sudden the dun cow rose up,
first on her hind legs, tipping the children all forward, and
then on her forelegs tipping them all back ward, yet no one fell
off at all, and when she was up on her feet, didn't she start
straight away for the deep waters of the loch? The children
screamed and tried to get off her back, but no matter how hard
they tried, there they stuck. My grandsire ran screaming toward
them, and put up his hand to pull them down, and his finger
touched the dun cow's back! Now never believe me, if his finger
didn't stick so he could not pull it away, and by that he knew
the dun heifer for a water cow and that she had bewitched the
children. He was being dragged along with them toward the water,
when all of a sudden he slipped out his knife and with one blow
chopped off his own finger and he was wanting that finger till
the day of his death."
"What became of the others?" gasped Alan, his black eyes glowing
like coals.
"They went on the dun cow's back into the lake, and the water
closed over them and they were never seen again," said the
Shepherd, "and that's the end of the tale."
While the Shepherd talked, the twilight had deepened into
darkness, the fire had died down, and the corners of the room
were filled with mysterious tricky shadows that danced with the
flickering flames on the hearth. Jean looked fearfully over her
shoulder. There was a creepy feeling in the back of her neck, and
Jock's eyes were as round as door-knobs. The Shepherd laughed at
them.
"Good children have little to fear from the fairy folk," he said.
"Come, now, your eyes are fair sticking out of your heads. I'll
give you a skirl on the bagpipes if Jeanie'll bring them from the
closet. Jock, stir up the fire, and Alan, give your clothes a
turn and see if they are drying."
The children ran to do these errands, and in a moment the fire
was flaming gayly up the chimney, chasing the murky shadows out
of the corners and making the room bright and cheerful again,
while the Shepherd, tucking the bag under his arm, stirred the
echoes on old Ben Vane with the wild strains of "Bonnie Doon" and
"Over the Water to Charlie." At last he struck up the music of
the Highland Fling, and the three children sprang to the middle
of the floor and danced the wild Scotch dance together.
Just as the fun was at its height, and Alan, looking very
handsome in his kilts, was doing the heel and toe with great
energy, there came a loud rap at the door. Instantly everything
stopped, just as short as Cinderella's ball did when the clock
struck twelve, and the Shepherd, laying aside his bagpipes,
opened the door. There stood a man with a bundle on his arm.
"Eppie McLean sent these clothes to the lad," he said, handing
the bundle to the Shepherd, "and he's to come back along with
me." Alan took the bundle, thanked the man, and disappeared with
Jock into "the room," where he changed his clothes, returning the
kilts, with regret, to Jock. "I've had just a grand day," he said
to Jean and the Shepherd as he shook hands and took leave of them
in the kitchen afterward. "I'll be back to-morrow for my
clothes."
"Come back and play then," said Jock.
When he was gone, Jean folded the kilts away in the closet again.
"He's a fine braw laddie," said the Shepherd.
"Aye," said Jock. "He had two suits of clothes, one as good as
the other, but he was not proud."
"I wonder what his father's work is," said Jean.
"He never spoke of his father at all, just his mother," said
Jock, and at that moment the wag-at-the-wall clock struck nine.
"Havers!" said Jean. "Look at the hour, Jock Campbell! Get you to
your bed."
VI. TWO DISCOVERIES
That night Jock dreamed of water cows, and clans dressed in
kilts, and when Sandy appeared the next morning, his head was
still buzzing with wild schemes of adventure.
"Come awa', Sandy," he said, "let's explore. We'll go up the burn
and see if we can't find out where it begins."
"What'll we do for lunch?" asked Sandy, who was practical. "I
brought a scone with me--but it'll never be enough for two."
"Ho!" said Jock. "If Rob Roy and all his men could live in caves
all the time and take care of themselves, I guess we can do it
for one day. We can fish, and maybe we might find some birds'
eggs. I'm not afraid."
"What about Alan?" asked Jean.
"If he comes to play, tell him to follow us right up the burn and
keep whistling the pewit's call three times over, and if we don't
see him, we'll hear him," said Jock. "There's no danger of not
finding us if he follows the water," and he and Sandy set forth
at once.
Jean had finished her work and was wondering what to do with the
long day which stretched before her, when Alan came running up
the hill and burst into the kitchen.
"Look here what I've got, Jean," he said, thumping a parcel down
on the kitchen table and tearing it open. "Eppie put this up for
me."
Jean looked and there was a whole pound of bacon, three big
scones, and a dozen eggs. "Save us!" cried Jean, clasping her
hands in admiration. "What will you do with it all?"
"I'll show you!" said Alan. "Where's Jock?"
"He and Sandy have gone up the burn, exploring," said Jean. "They
said you were to follow, and if you didn't find them, keep
whistling the pewit's call three times till they answered you."
"What is the pewit's call?" asked Alan.
"Michty me!" said Jean. "Think of not knowing that!" She pursed
up her lips and whistled "Pee-wit, pee-wit, pee-wit."
"You see, we don't have them in London;" Alan apologetically
explained, "unless it's in the Zoo; but I say, Jean, aren't you
coming, too? You're as good as a boy any day. Come along!"
"All right," said Jean. "I wanted to dreadfully. I'll get a
basket for the lunch." She went to the closet and brought out a
basket which her father had made out of split willow twigs,
packed the lunch in it, and off they started.
They passed the place where the fish-bones were buried, and the
spot where Alan had fallen into the water the day before, and
then plunged into the deep pine forest which filled the glen and
covered the mountain-sides. The pine-needles lay thick on the
ground, and above them the pine boughs waved in the breeze,
making a soft sighing sound, "like a giant breathing," Jean said.
The silence deepened as they went farther and farther into the
woods. There was only the purring of the water, the occasional
snapping of a twig, or the lonely cry of a bird to break the
stillness. It was dark, too, except where the sunshine, breaking
through the thick branches overhead, made spots of golden light
upon the pine-needles.
"It's almost solemn; isn't it?" said Jean to Alan in a hushed
voice. "I was never so far in the woods before."
"I wonder which side of the burn the boys went. If we should
take the wrong side, we might not find them," said Alan.
"Let's whistle," said Jean. She puckered her lips and gave the
pewit call, but there was no answer.
"Perhaps they didn't hear it because the burn makes such a noise.
It keeps growing louder and louder," said Alan.
Whistling and listening for an answer at every few steps, they
climbed over rocks and fallen trees, keeping as close as possible
to the stream, until suddenly they found themselves gazing up at
a beautiful waterfall which came gushing from a pile of giant
rocks reaching up among the topmost boughs of the pines.
"Oh, it's bonny! but how shall we get up?" cried Jean.
"We must just find a way," said Alan.
"It's a grand place for robbers and
poachers," said Jean, looking fearsomely at the cliffs stretching
far above them. "Angus Niel says the forests are full of them."
"I'd as soon meet a poacher as Angus Niel himself," said Alan,
laughing, "but I'm not afraid as long as you're with me. It's
Angus that's afraid of you, Jock says."
Jean laughed too. "I'm not afraid when I'm in my own kitchen, but
it's different in the woods," she said.
Alan had been nosing around among the rocks as they talked,
getting nearer and nearer to the fall, and now he suddenly
disappeared, and for a few moments Jean was quite alone in the
woods. Soon Alan reappeared from behind the fall itself and
beckoned her to follow him.
Jean was looking at the wall of rock which loomed above them.
"Sal!" she remarked, "we'll be needing wings to get up there, or
we'll smash all the eggs for sure."
For answer Alan popped out of sight again behind the fall, and
Jean, following closely in his wake, was just in time to catch
sight of his legs as he dived into a hole opening into the rocky
wall. The cliff from which the water plunged overhung the rocks
below in such a way that she could pass behind the veil of water
without getting wet at all.
Into this mysterious opening behind the fall Jean followed her
leader, and found herself climbing a narrow dry channel through
which the stream had once forced its way. It was a hard, rough
scramble up a narrow passage worn by the water and through holes
almost too small to squeeze through, but at last she saw Alan's
heels just disappearing over the edge of a jutting rock and knew
they were coming out into daylight again. An instant later Alan's
head appeared in the opening, his hand reached down to help her
up, and with one last effort she came out upon an open ledge and
looked about her.
She could not help an exclamation of delight at what she saw. The
rock was so high that they could look out over the treetops clear
to the slope where the little gray house stood. The waterfall,
plunging from a still higher level, made a barrier on one side of
them, and on the other side the cliff rose, a sheer wall of rock.
Between the wall of water and the wall of rock there was a cave
extending into the solid rock for a distance of about twenty
feet. There was absolutely no way of reaching this fastness
except through the hidden stair, and one might wander for years
through the forest and never see it at all.
"Oh," exclaimed Jean, "it's wonderful! How Jock will love this
place! Don't you believe this very cave was used by Rob Roy and
his men?" and Alan, swelling with pride to think he had found it
all himself, said yes, he was sure of it.
"I tell you what we'll do," cried Alan, a minute later. "We'll
just leave the basket here in the cave, and when we've found the
boys we'll come back and have our lunch here."
They tucked the basket away out of sight on a rocky shelf in the
cave, and found their way down the steep rough stairway to the
bed of the stream again and, making a wide detour, came out above
the fall. They struggled on for nearly a mile farther still
without finding any trace of the boys, and were beginning to be
discouraged, when they saw a break in the trees with glimpses of
blue sky beyond, and a few moments later came out upon the shores
of a tiny mountain lake, shining like a beautiful blue jewel in
the dark setting of the pine trees on its banks.
Beyond the lake the purple peaks of higher mountains made a
ragged outline against the sky. The sun was now almost directly
overhead; the waters of the lake were still, and its lovely
shores were mirrored on the placid surface. A great eagle soared
in stately circles in the deep blue sky. It was so beautiful and
so still that the children stood a moment among the rocks where
the tarn emptied itself into the mountain stream to look at it.
"It's just the place for a water cow, or a horse maybe," Jean
whispered to Alan.
"Sh!" was Alan's only reply. He seized Jean's hand and dragged hear
down behind a rock and pointed toward the south. There, coming out of
the woods, was a beautiful stag. It poised its noble head, and sniffed
the air, as if it suspected there might be human beings about, and
then stepped daintily to the lake-shore and bent to drink. Its lips
had scarcely touched the water when the children were startled by the
loud report of a gun.
"Poachers," gasped Jean, hiding her face and wishing they had
never come. "Oh, where are Jock and Sandy?" Her only thought was
to make herself as small as possible and keep out of sight behind
the rocks, but Alan peered through the screen of bushes which hid
the rock and made violent gestures to Jean to make her look, too.
Jean crawled on her hands and knees to Alan's side, and when she
looked, what she saw made her so angry that she would have sprung
to her feet if Alan had not held her down with a fierce grip. The
stag was lying by the lake-shore, and a man with the muzzle of
his gun still smoking was running toward it from the woods. The
man was Angus Niel!
Jean was so astonished that for an instant she could not believe
her own eyes. The two children flattened themselves out on their
stomachs and watched him pull a boat from its hiding-place among
some bushes on the shore, paddle quietly to the spot where the
dead stag lay, and load it swiftly into the boat. Then he raced
back to the woods again and reappeared, carrying a string of dead
rabbits. These also he crowded into the boat, and then, taking up
the oars, rowed across the lake to a landing-place on the other
side. The children watched him, scarcely breathing in their
excitement, until he had unloaded his game from the boat and
disappeared into the woods, dragging the body of the stag after
him. In a few moments he came back for the rabbits and, having
disposed of them in the same mysterious way, returned to the
boat.
Then Jean exploded in a fierce whisper. "The old thief!" she
said, shaking her fist after him. "He's the poacher himself!
That's why he never brings any one before the bailie, though he's
always telling about catching them at it! And he making such a
fuss because Jock chased the rabbit that was eating up our
garden! Oh, oh, oh!"
She clutched Alan and shook him in her boiling indignation. Alan
laughed and shook her back. "I didn't do it, you little
spitfire!" he whispered, and Jean moaned, "Oh, I know it, Alan,
but I can't catch him and I'm so angry I've just got to do
something to somebody."
"Do you know what that old thief does?" said Alan. "He sends
that game down to the city--to Glasgow, or Edinburgh, or even
London, maybe--and gets a lot of money for it! No wonder he tells
big stories to make people afraid to go into the woods."
"I hope he won't meet the boys," moaned Jean. "Jock would be sure
to let his tongue loose, and then maybe he'd shoot him too!"
"Listen," said Alan. He gave the pewit's call and waited. It was
answered from a point so near that they were startled. They
looked in every direction but saw nothing of the boys.
"Maybe it was a real pewit after all," whispered Jean, but just
then a tiny pebble struck Alan's cap, and, looking around in the
direction from which it came, he saw two freckled faces rise up
from behind the rock on the opposite side of the spring.
"There they are," he said, punching Jean and pointing; "they came
up the other side of the burn." Then, making a cup of his hands,
he called across the stream, "Did you see him?" The boys nodded.
"Slip back as fast as you can down that side of the burn," Alan
said, "and we'll meet at the fall. Wait at the foot if you get
there first. We've got something to show you. Whist, and be
quick, for he'll be coming back before long, and this way like as
not."
Jock and Sandy nodded and disappeared, and Alan and Jean,
springing from their hiding-place, hurried as fast as they could
down their side of the stream to the trysting-place.
VII. THE CLAN
When Jean and Alan reached the waterfall, they found Jock and Sandy
there before them. "Come over to our side," Alan called. The two boys
ran further down stream and crossed the brook on stones which stood
out of the water, and in a moment more were back again at the foot of
the fall.
"What have you got to show us?" demanded Jock. "I hope it's
something to eat." Jock had bitterly regretted his morning
decision to find his food in the forest. The scone which Sandy
had brought from home had been divided and eaten long ago; and
all four of the children were now so hungry that they could think
of nothing else, not even of Angus Niel and their adventures by
the lake.