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Updated: June 13, 2025
Of late the relations between M'Adam and James Moore had been unusually strained. Though they were neighbors, communications between the two were of the rarest; and it was for the first time for many a long day that, on an afternoon shortly after Red Wull had come into his possession, M'Adam entered the yard of Kenmuir, bent on girding at the master for an alleged trespass at the Stony Bottom.
That is Owd Bob o' Kenmuir, of whom the tales are many as the flowers on the May. With him dies the last of the immortal line of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir. You travel on up the bill, something pensive, and knock at the door of the house on the top. A woman, comely with the inevitable comeliness of motherhood, opens to you.
"Ye may thrash me till ye're blind; and it's nob'but yer duty; but if only one daurs so much as to look at yer Wullie ye're mad," the boy answered bitterly. And with that he turned away defiantly and openly in the direction of Kenmuir. M'Adam made a step forward, and then stopped. "I'll see ye agin, ma lad, this evenin'," he cried with cruel significance.
"Better luck to the two on yo' next time!" laughed a scornful voice; and David ran down the hill toward Kenmuir. FROM that hour the fire of M'Adam's jealousy blazed into a mighty flame. The winning of the Dale Cup had become a mania with him. He had won it once, and would again despite all the Moores, all the Gray Dogs, all the undutiful sons in existence; on that point he was resolved.
The smoke from Kenmuir was winding slowly up against the sky; to her right the low gray cottages of the village cuddled in the bosom of the Dale; far away over the Marches towered the gaunt Scaur; before her rolled the swelling slopes of the Muir Pike; while behind she glanced timidly over her shoulder was the hill, at the top of which squatted the Grange, lifeless, cold, scowling.
And while the girl with the glory of yellow hair is preparing food for you they are hospitable to a fault, these Northerners you will notice on the mantelpiece, standing solitary, a massive silver cup, dented. That is the world-known Shepherds' Trophy, won outright, as the old man will tell you, by Owd Bob, last and best of the Gray Dogs of Kenmuir.
"There's not a critter moves on Kenmuir at nights but Th' Owd Un knows it." Yet, even as he said it, a little man, draggled, weary-eyed, smeared with dew and dust, was limping in at the door of a house barely a mile away. "Nae luck, Wullie, curse it!" he cried, throwing himself into a chair, and addressing some one who was not there "nae luck.
One lay sprawling on the crest of the rick, the other stood perched on a ladder at a lower level. The latter, small, old, with shrewd nut-brown countenance, was Tammas Thornton, who had served the Moores of Kenmuir for more than half a century. The other, on top of the stack, wrapped apparently in gloomy meditation, was Sam'l Todd.
The suspicions that M'Adam nourished dark designs against James Moore were somewhat confirmed in that, on several occasions in the bitter dusks of January afternoons, a little insidious figure was reported to have been seen lurking among the farm-buildings of Kenmuir. Once Sam'l Todd caught the little man fairly, skulking away in the woodshed.
There's not another soul outside Kenmuir he'd do that for." "Ay, sir," said the Master. "Bob knows a mon when he sees one." "He does," acquiesced the other. "And by the by, James, the talk in the village is that you've settled not to run him for the Cup. Is, that so?" The Master nodded. "It is, sir. They're all mad I should, but I mun cross 'em.
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