, for something to eat. Turning a corner he came upon a
hen-house--and there was a crowd of hens and half-grown chickens
about the very dish into which he had seen the remnants of the
breakfast thrown, all pecking billfuls out of it. As I may have
said before, he always felt at liberty to share with the animals,
partly, I suppose, because he saw they had no scrupulosity or
ceremony amongst themselves; so he dipped his hand into the dish:
why should not the bird of the air now and then peck with the more
respectable of the barn-door, if only to learn his inferiority?
Greatly refreshed, he got up from among the hens, scrambled over
the dry stone-wall, and trotted away to the burn.

CHAPTER XIV.

HORNIE.

It was now time he should resume his journey up Daurside, and he set
out to follow the burn that he might regain the river. It led him
into a fine meadow, where a number of cattle were feeding. The
meadow was not fenced--little more than marked off, indeed, upon one
side, from a field of growing corn, by a low wall of earth, covered
with moss and grass and flowers. The cattle were therefore herded
by a boy, whom Gibbie recognized even in the distance as him by
whose countenance he had been so much attracted when, like an old
deity on a cloud, he lay spying through the crack in the ceiling.
The boy was reading a book, from which every now and then he lifted
his eyes to glance around him, and see whether any of the cows or
heifers or stirks were wandering beyond their pasture of rye-grass
and clover. Having them all before him, therefore no occasion to
look behind, he did not see Gibbie approaching. But as soon as he
seemed thoroughly occupied, a certain black cow, with short sharp
horns and a wicked look, which had been gradually, as was her wont,
edging nearer and nearer to the corn, turned suddenly and ran for
it, jumped the dyke, and plunging into a mad revelry of greed, tore
and devoured with all the haste not merely of one insecure, but of
one that knew she was stealing. Now Gibbie had been observant
enough during his travels to learn that this was against the law and
custom of the country--that it was not permitted to a cow to go into
a field where there were no others--and like a shot he was after the
black marauder. The same instant the herd boy too, lifting his eyes
from his book, saw her, and springing to his feet, caught up his
great stick, and ran also: he had more than one reason to run, fo