ow_, the shepherd's dog, and follow the
track of wild creatures in the snow. The rabbit makes marks like **, and
the hare makes marks like **; but the fox's track is just as if you
had pushed a piece of wood through the snow--a number of cuts in the
surface, going straight along.

[Illustration: Tracks of Hare and Fox]

When it was very cold, the grouse and black-cocks would come into the
trees near the house, and Randal and Jean would put out porridge for
them to eat. And the great white swans floated in from the frozen lochs
on the hills, and gathered round open reaches and streams of the Tweed.
It was pleasant to be a boy then in the North. And at Hallow E'en they
would duck for apples in tubs of water, and burn nuts in the fire, and
look for the shadow of the lady Randal was to marry, in the mirror; but
he only saw Jean looking over his shoulder.

The days were very short in winter, so far North, and they would soon be
driven into the house. Then they sat by the nursery fire; and those
were almost the pleasantest hours, for the old nurse would tell them old
Scotch stories of elves and fairies, and sing them old songs. Jean would
crawl close to Randal and hold his hand, for fear the Red Etin, or some
other awful bogle, should get her: and in the dancing shadows of the
firelight she would think she saw Whuppity Stoorie, the wicked old witch
with the spinning-wheel; but it was really nothing but the shadow of the
wheel that the old nurse drove with her foot--_birr, birr_--and that
whirred and rattled as she span and told her tale.

[Illustration: Page 254]

For people span their cloth at home then, instead of buying it from
shops; and the old nurse was a great woman for spinning.

She was a great woman for stories, too, and believed in fairies, and
"bogles," as she called them. Had not her own cousin, Andrew Tamson,
passed the Cauldshiels Loch one New Year morning? And had he not heard
a dreadful roaring, as if all the cattle on Faldonside Hill were routing
at once? And then did he not see a great black beast roll down the
hillside, like a black ball, and run into the loch, which grew white
with foam, and the waves leaped up the banks like a tide rising? What
could that be except the kelpie that lives in Cauldshiels Loch, and is
just a muckle big water bull? "And what for should there no be water kye,
if there 's land kye?"

Randal and Jean thought it was very likely there were "kye," or cattle,
in the water. A