e very different--big and clumsy, and not white. They were
all eating, and this was their food on which he lay! He wished he
too could eat it--and tried, but found it even less satisfactory
than the oats, for it nearly choked him, and set him coughing so
that he was in considerable danger of betraying his presence to the
men in the barn. How did the horses manage to get such dry stuff
down their throats? But the cheese was dry too, and he could eat
that! No doubt the cheese, as well as the fine straw, was there for
the horses! He would like to see the beautiful white creature down
there eat a bit of it; but with all his big teeth he did not think
he could manage a whole cheese, and how to get a piece broken off
for him, with those men there, he could not devise. It would want a
long-handled hammer like those with which he had seen men breaking
stones on the road.

A door opened beyond, and a man came in and led two of the horses
out, leaving the door open. Gibbie clambered down from the top of
the hay into the stall beside the white horse, and ran out. He was
almost in the fields, had not even a fence to cross.

He cast a glance around, and went straight for a neighbouring
hollow, where, taught by experience, he hoped to find water.

CHAPTER XI.

JANET.

Once away, Gibbie had no thought of returning. Up Daurside was the
sole propulsive force whose existence he recognized. But when he
lifted his head from drinking at the stream, which was one of some
size, and, greatly refreshed, looked up its channel, a longing
seized him to know whence came the water of life which had thus
restored him to bliss--how a burn first appears upon the earth. He
thought it might come from the foot of a great conical mountain
which seemed but a little way off. He would follow it up and see.
So away he went, yielding at once, as was his wont, to the first
desire that came. He had not trotted far along the bank, however,
before, at a sharp turn it took, he saw that its course was a much
longer one than he had imagined, for it turned from the mountain,
and led up among the roots of other hills; while here in front of
him, direct from the mountain, as it seemed, came down a smaller
stream, and tumbled noisily into this. The larger burn would lead
him too far from the Daur; he would follow the smaller one. He
found a wide shallow place, crossed the larger, and went up the side
of the smaller.

Doubly free after his im