CHAPTER X.
THE BARN.
By this time Gibbie had got well up towards the roots of the hills of Gormgarnet, and the river had dwindled greatly.

He was no longer afraid of it, but would lie for hours listening to its murmurs over its pebbly bed, and sometimes even sleep in the hollows of its banks, or below the willows that overhung it.

Every here and there, a brown rivulet from some peat-bog on a hill--brown and clear, like smoke-crystals molten together, flowed into it, and when he had lost it, guided him back to his guide.

Farm after farm he passed, here one widely bordering a valley stream, there another stretching its skirts up the hillsides till they were lost in mere heather, where the sheep wandered about, cropping what stray grass-blades and other eatables they could find.

Lower down he had passed through small towns and large villages: here farms and cottages, with an occasional country-seat and little village of low thatched houses, made up the abodes of men.