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But he did not doubt that he was, as his aunt had said, “a lazy, deceitful, thieving hound.”

Kit Kennedy came out of the byre, and trudged away out over the field at the back of the barn, to the sheep in the park. He heard one of them cough as a human being does behind his hand. The lantern threw dancing reflections on the snow. Tyke grovelled and rolled in the light drift, barking loudly. He bit at his own tail. Kit set down the lantern, and fell upon him for a tussle. The two of them had rolled one another into a snowdrift in exactly ten seconds, from which they rose glowing with heat–the heat of young things when the blood runs fast. Tyke, being excited, scoured away wildly, and circled the park at a hand-gallop before his return. But Kit only lifted the lantern and made for the turnip-pits.

The turnip-cutter stood there, with great square mouth black against the sky. That mouth must be filled. Kit went to the end of the barrow-like mound of the turnip-pit. It was covered with snow, so that it hardly showed above the level of the field. Kit threw back the coverings of old sacks and straw which kept the turnips from the frost. There lay the great green-and-yellow globes full of sap. The snow fell upon them from the top of the pit. The frost grasped them without. It was a chilly job to handle them, but Kit did not hesitate a moment.

He filled his arms with them, and went to the turnip-cutter. Soon the crunch, crunch of the knives was to be heard as Kit drove round the handle, and afterwards the frosty sound of the square finger-lengths of cut turnip falling into the basket. The sheep had gathered about him, silently for the most part. Tyke sat still and dignified now, guarding the lantern, which the sheep were inclined to butt over. Kit heard the animals knocking against the empty troughs with their hard little trotters, and snuffing about them with their nostrils.

He lifted the heavy basket, heaved it against his breast, and made his way down the long line of troughs. The sheep crowded about him, shoving and elbowing each other like so many human beings, callously and selfishly. His first basket did not go far, as he shovelled it in great handfuls into the troughs, and Kit came back for another. It was tiring work, and the day was dawning grey when he had finished. Then he made the circuit of the field, to assure himself that all was right, and that there were no stragglers lying frozen in corners, or turned avel [6] in the lirks of the knowes.

[Footnote 6: A sheep turns avel when it so settles itself upon its back in a hollow of the hill that it cannot rise.]

Then he went back to the onstead. The moon had gone down, and the farm-buildings loomed very cold and bleak out of the frost-fog.

Mistress MacWalter was on foot. She had slept nearly two hours, being half-an-hour too long, after wearying herself with raising Kit; and, furthermore, she had risen with a very bad temper. But this was no uncommon occurrence.

She was in the byre with a lantern of her own. She was talking to herself, and “flyting on” the patient cows, who now stood chewing the cuds of their breakfast. She slapped them apart with her stool, applied savagely to their flanks. She even lifted her foot to them, which affronts a self-respecting cow as much as a human being.

In this spirit she greeted Kit when he appeared.

“Where hae ye been, ye careless deevil, ye? A guid mind hae I to gie ye my milking-stool owre yer crown, ye senseless, menseless blastie! What ill-contriving tricks hae ye been at, that ye haena gotten the kye milkit?”