ad seen Tonald dance before, but this was different, for it was
not Tonald McKenzie alone who danced before them, but the incarnate
spirit of the Highlands, the unconquerable, dauntless, lawless
Highlands, with its purple hills and treacherous caverns that fling
defiance at the world and fear not man nor devil.

Tonald finished with a leap as nimble as that with which a cat springs
on its victim while the company watched spellbound. He slipped away
into a corner and would dance no more that night.

When twelve o'clock came, the dancing was over, and with the smell of
coffee and the rattle of dishes in the kitchen it was not hard to
persuade big John Kennedy to sing.

Big John lived alone in a little shanty in the hills, and the prospect
of a good square meal was a pleasant one to the lonely fellow who had
been his own cook so long. Big John lived among the Crofters, whose
methods of cooking were simple in the extreme, and from them he had
picked up strange ways of housekeeping. He ate out of the frying pan;
he milked the cow in the porridge pot, and only took what he needed for
each meal, reasoning that she had a better way of keeping it than he
had. Big John had departed almost entirely from "white man's ways," and
lived a wild life free from the demands of society. His ability to
"call off" at dances was the one tie that bound him to the Canadian
people on the plain.

"Oh, I can't sing," John said sheepishly, when they urged him.

"Tell us how it happened any way John," Bud Perkins said. "Give us the
story of it."

"Go on John. Sing about the cowboy," Peter Slater coaxed.

"It iss a teffle of a good song, that," chuckled Tonald.

"Well," John began, clearing his throat, "here it's for you. I've
ruined me voice drivin' oxen though, but here's the song."

It was a song of the plains, weird and wistful, with an uncouth
plaintiveness that fascinated these lonely hill-dwellers.

As I was a-walkin' one beautiful morning,
As I was a-walkin' one morning in May,
I saw a poor cowboy rolled up in his blanket,
Rolled up in his blanket as cold as the clay!

The listener would naturally suppose that the cowboy was dead in his
blanket that lovely May morning; but that idea had to be abandoned as
the song went on, because the cowboy was very much alive in the
succeeding verses, when--

Round the bar bummin' where bullets were hummin'
He snuffed out the candle to show why he come!

Then his