"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 n.o.ble head, and sniffed the air, as if it suspected there might be human beings about, and then stepped daintily to the lake-sh.o.r.e 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-sh.o.r.e, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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.
Alan looked cautiously around in every direction. "Follow me, and keep quiet tongues in your heads," he said. Then he disappeared under the fall, and Jean instantly followed him. For a moment Jock and Sandy were as mystified as Jean had been when Alan first found the secret stairway, but it was not long before they, too, saw the hole in the rock, plunged in and, following the winding pa.s.sage-way, came out upon the top of the rock.
"There," said Alan, beaming with pride, as he displayed his wonderful lair, "doesn"t this beat Robinson Crusoe all to pieces?
If he had found a place like this on his desert island, he wouldn"t have had to build a stockade or anything."
"It"s one of the very caves where Rob Roy hid! I"m sure of it,"
Jock declared with conviction, and Sandy was so overcome with admiration that he turned a back somersault and almost upset Jean, who was coming out of the cave with the basket on her arm.
"You see," said Alan, "we could stay here a week if we had food enough, and never come down at all. All we"d have to do for water would be to hold a pan under the edge of the fall. There"s no way of getting up here except by the secret stair, and that"s not easy to find. There never was such a place for fun."
Sandy had righted himself by this time and was gazing ecstatically at the basket, which Jean had begun to unpack.
"Losh!" he cried. "Look, Jock! Bacon and eggs and scones! Oh, my word!" Jock gave one look and whooped for joy.
"Keep still," said Alan. "Angus may be coming back this way, and he has a gun with him. We"re safe enough up here, if we keep quiet, but if you go howling around like that, he"ll surely hunt for the noise."
For a moment they kept quiet and listened, but there was no sound except the noise of the falling waters. "Huh!" Sandy snorted, "he couldn"t hear anything, anyway. The roar of the fall hides all the other noises."
"Oh, let"s eat!" begged Jock, caressing his empty stomach and gazing longingly at the food.
"You can"t eat now," said Jean; "the food must be cooked first, and what shall we do for a fire?"
"We could make one right here on the rock," said Alan, "if we had something to burn. I"ve got matches."
"We"ll have to get twigs and dry pine-needles and broken branches," said Jock, "and bring them up the secret stair, though it"ll be hard work getting them through the narrow places. We ought to have a rope. We could pull a basketful up over the edge of the rock as easy as nothing."
"We"ll bring a rope next time," said Alan. "Hurry! I"m starving!"
The three boys disappeared down the secret stair, and while they were gone, Jean found loose stones, with which she made a support for the frying-pan around a s.p.a.ce for the fire. The boys were soon back with plenty of small fuel, and in a short time a bright fire was blazing on the rock and there was a wonderful smell of frying bacon in the air. The boys sat cross-legged around the fire, while Jean turned the bacon and broke the eggs into the sputtering fat.
"You look just exactly like Tam watching the rabbit-hole,"
laughed Jean. "I wonder you don"t paw the ground and bark!"
At last the scones were handed out, each one laden with a slice of bacon and a fried egg, and there was blissful silence for some moments.
"Oh, aren"t you glad you didn"t die of the measles and miss this?" Sandy said to Alan, rolling over on his back and waving his legs in the air as he finished his third egg. Alan"s mouth was too full for a reply other than a cordial grunt.
"Why, Sandy Crumpet!" exclaimed Jean, reprovingly, "don"t you believe heaven is nicer than Scotland?"
"Maybe it is," Sandy admitted, doubtfully, "but I like this better than sitting around playing on harps and trumpets the way the angels do."
"Sandy Crumpet played the trumpet," howled Jock in derision.
"Indeed and indeed, Sandy, I like this better than having to hear you." Then, before Sandy could think of an answer a memory of the catechism crossed his mind, and he added as afterthought, "How do you ken you"re one of the elect, anyway, Sandy Crumpet? If you"re not, you"d not be playing on any trumpets, or harps either, but like as not frying in the hot place like that bacon there."
Sandy rushed to the defense of his character. "I"m just as elect as you are, Jock Campbell," he said.
This time Jock had no answer ready, and Jean reproved them both.
"Shame on you!" she said. "You"ll neither one of you get so much as a taste of heaven, I doubt, and you talking like that."
"Where will Angus Niel be going, then, when he dies?" asked Jock.
"I don"t just mind whether there"s a chance for thieves, but the Bible says drunkards and such-like stand no chance at all."
"It"s not for us to judge," said Jean primly, "but I have my opinion."
Alan had been busily eating during this conversation, and now he joined in. "I say," he began, "I"m not worrying about what will become of Angus Niel after he"s dead. I want to know what"s going to be done with him right now. We"re the only ones that know about this. Are we just going to keep whist, or shall we tell on him?"
"Let"s tell on him!" shouted Sandy.
"Who"ll you be telling?" said Jean with some scorn.
"Why, the bailie, maybe, or the Auld Laird himself," said Sandy.
"Havers!" said Jean. "You"re a braw lad to go hobn.o.bbing with the bailie. He"ll not believe you, anyway; he"s a friend of Angus himself, and, as for the Auld Laird, how would you get hold of him at all, and he far away in London?"