n.

"Losh!" said Sandy, rolling over with his feet to the fire, when
he could eat no more, "I thought you said you had a rainy day
plan, Chief."

"So I have," said Alan, drawing a little book from his pocket.
"I'm going to read to you."

Sandy glanced at the book. "Not poetry, Chief!" he said with
alarm. "Surely you don't mean that!"

"It isn't just poetry," said Alan. "It's a story about Roderick
Dhu and Clan Alpine, and hunting deer in these very mountains.
You'll like it, I know."

Sandy groaned and laid his head on his arm. "Go ahead," he said
with resignation. "You're the Chief and I can't help myself."

"I'll be washing up the dishes while you read," said Jean.

"Blaze away," said Jock, who loved books as much as he disliked
work.

"It's 'The Lady of the Lake,'" Alan began.

"Oh!" snorted Sandy, to whom Walter Scott was scarcely more than
a name, "I thought it was about fighting and robbers, and things
like that, and here it's about a lady! and it's about love too, I
doubt! I wonder at you, Alan McRae!"

Alan made no reply but began to read. When he reached a line
about "Beauty's matchless eye," Sandy snored insultingly and was
promptly kicked by Jock. But when Alan reached the lines

"The stag at eve had drunk his fill
Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,"

Sandy sat up and began to think the despised poem might amount to
something after all. Jean had finished the dishes by this time
and sat cross-legged with her chin in her hand, staring into the
fire, as Alan read how the splendid stag pursued by hunters,

"Like crested leader proud and high
Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky;
A moment gazed adown the dale,
A moment snuffed the tainted gale,"

Then she cried out, "Michty me! It's just exactly like the stag
we saw Angus Niel shoot by the tarn; isn't it, now, Alan?"

"And Benvoirlich is the very mountain we can see far away to the
south from our house," interrupted Jock, when Alan reached that
part of the poem.

"Did the hunters get the stag?" demanded Sandy, and "Go on with
the tale," shouted all three. Alan read on and on by the
flickering light of the fire, and so absorbed were they all in
the story of the region they knew and loved so dearly that a
shaft of sunlight from the west shot across the cave, lighting up
the gloomy corners, before they realized that the day was far
gone and the rain had stopped.

"It's time to go home," said Jean. "The sun is low i