THE GAMEKEEPER The second winter came, and with the first frost Gibbie resumed his sheepskin coat and the brogues and leggings which he had made for himself of deer-hide tanned with the hair.

It pleased the two old people to see him so warmly clad.

It pleased them also that, thus dressed, he always reminded them of some sacred personage undetermined--Jacob, or John the Baptist, or the man who went to meet the lion and be killed by him--in Robert's big Bible, that is, in one or other of the woodcuts of the same.

Very soon the stories about him were all stirred up afresh, and new rumours added.

This one and that of the children declared they had caught sight of the beast-loon, running about the rocks like a goat; and one day a boy of Angus's own, who had been a good way up the mountain, came home nearly dead with terror, saying the beast-loon had chased him a long way.