But Fergus's account of his disappearance had also, in her judgment, a decided element of the marvellous in it.

She was strongly inclined to believe that the brownie had cast a glamour over him and the laird and Angus, all three, and had been making game of them for his own amusement.
Indeed Daurside generally refused the explanation of the brownie presented for its acceptance, and the laird scored nothing against the arch-enemy Superstition.
Donal Grant, missing his "cratur" that day for the first time, heard enough when he came home to satisfy him that he had been acting the brownie in the house and the stable as well as in the field, incredible as it might well appear that such a child should have had even mere strength for what he did.

Then first also, after he had thus lost him, he began to understand his worth, and to see how much he owed him.

While he had imagined himself kind to the urchin, the urchin had been laying him under endless obligation.

For he left him with ever so much more in his brains than when he came.