Blair Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

THE TWO SHEPHERDS. 83
taking the stepping-stones, and wlien lie was over
there in the river, the dog that was with him leaped
at the back of his head. He threw her oif him ; she
leaped again ; he did the same thing. When he was
on the other side of the river, he put his hand on his
head, and there was not a bit of the bonnet on it. He
was saying, whether should he return to seek the
bonnet, or should he go home without it. " Its dis-
gusting for me to return home without my bonnet ; I
will return over yet to the place where I put my foot-
clothes off me ; I doubt it is there that I left it." So
he returned to the other side of the river. He saw a
right big man seated where he had been, and liis own
bonnet in his hand. He caught hold of the bonnet,
and he took it from him. " What business hast thou
there with that? — It is mine, and thou hadst no
business to take it from me, though thou hast got it."
Over the river then they went, without a word for
each other, fiercely, hatingly. When they went over,
then, on the river, the big man put his hand under the
arm of the shepherd, and he began to drag the lad
down to a loch that was there, against his wiU and
against his strength. They stood front to front,
bravely, firmly on either side. In spite of the strength
of the shepherd's son, the big man was about to con-
quer. It was so that the shepherd's son thought of
putting liis hand about an oak tree that was in the
place. The big man was striving to take liim with
him, and the tree was bending and twisting. At last
the tree was loosening in the earth. She loosened all
but one of her roots. At the time when the last root
of the tree slipped, the cocks that were about the wood
crowed. The shepherd's son understood when he
heard the cocks crowing that it was on the short side
of day. WTien they heard between them the cocks