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When Malcolm took Kelpie to her stall the night of the arrival of Lady Bellair and her nephew, he was rushed upon by Demon, and nearly prostrated between his immoderate welcome and the startled rearing of the mare. The hound had arrived a couple of hours before, while Malcolm was out.
Then he fell, and Francis found himself rolling in the water, swept along by the current. A little way lower down, at a sharp turn of the stream under a high bank, was a deep pool, a place held much in dread by the country lads and lasses, being a haunt of the kelpie. Francis knew the spot well, and had good reason to fear that, carried into it, he must be drowned, for he could not swim.
A child presented me with a bunch of cotton-grass, gathered on the moors not far from the Roman-Wall. I asked if she knew what they were that she had brought. "Moss-troopers," she replied. Many of the Cheviot heights bear most suggestive and interesting names, such as Cushat Law, Kelpie Strand, Earl's Seat, Stot Crags, Deer Play, Wether Lair, Bloodybushedge, Monkside, etc., etc.
"By the time the sun was out of sight, the smell of the roasting pig had got down the avenue to the side of the pot, just where the kelpie always got out. He smelt it the moment he put up his head, and he thought it smelt so nice that he would go and see where it was. The moment he got out he was between the stones, but he never thought of that, for it was the straight way to the pig.
'Rob MacLean has come to say that the Kelpie iss all ready, sir, said Duncan, who among his other avocations sailed his master's yacht. 'Don't let us wait any longer then, said the laird; 'we shall not have time to visit the caves this evening if we miss the tide.
"A party o' Highlanders were busily engaged, ae day in harvest, in cutting down the corn o' that field; an' just aboot noon, when the sun shone brightest an' they were busiest in the work, they heard a voice frae the river exclaim: 'The hour but not the man has come. Sure enough, on looking round, there was the kelpie stan'in' in what they ca' a fause ford, just fornent the auld kirk.
White gates have an evil name still, and Muckle Haws was full of horrors as he drew near them, clinging to Johnny's arm. It was on such a night, he would remember, that he saw the White Lady go through the gates greeting sorely, with a dead bairn in her arms, while water kelpie laughed and splashed in the pools and the witches danced in a ring round Broken Buss.
"I want to speak to ye, Ma'colm MacPhail," she said, in a tone whose very stillness revealed a depth of trouble. "I doobt I canna hearken to ye richt the noo," said Malcolm. "But bide a wee." He swung himself from Kelpie's back, and, hanging hard on the bit with one hand, searched with the other in the pocket of his coat, saying, as he did so "Sugar, Kelpie! sugar!"
Nay, I have a touch at them in my ballad, an I had but had the good luck to have it sung to end;" and again he set off in the same key: From haunted spring and grassy ring, Troop goblin, elf, and fairy; And the kelpie must flit from the black bog-pit, And the brownie must not tarry; To Limbo-lake, Their way they take, With scarce the pith to flee.
Courthope at the House. Then he fed and dressed Kelpie, saddled her and galloped to Duff Harbor, where he found Mr. Soutar at breakfast, and arranged with him to be at Lossie House at two o'clock. On his way back he called on Mr. Morrison, and requested his presence at the same hour.
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