Their path brought them by the hut and its bit of garden. Jock
Binning, that was Mother Binning's crippled son, sat fishing in the
stream. Mother Binning had been working in the garden, but when she
saw the figures on the path below she took her distaff and sat on the
bench in the sun. When they came by she raised her voice.

"Mr. Alexander, how are the laird and the leddy?"

"They're very well, Mother."

"Ye'll be gaeing sune to Edinburgh? Wha may be this laddie?"

"It is Ian Rullock, of Black Hill."

"Sae the baith o' ye are gaeing to Edinburgh? Will ye be friends
there?"

"That we will!"

"Hech, sirs!" Mother Binning drew a thread from her distaff. The two
were about to travel on when she stopped them again with a gesture.
"Dinna mak sic haste! There's time enough behind us, and time enough
before us. And it's a strange warld, and a large, and an auld! Sit ye
and crack a bit with an auld wife by the road."

But they had dallied at White Farm and in the cave, and Alexander was
in haste.

"We cannot stop now, Mother. We're bound for the Kelpie's Pool."

"And why do ye gae there? That's a drear, wanrestfu' place!" said
Mother Binning.

"Ian has not seen it yet. I want to show it to him."

Mother Binning turned her distaff slowly. "Eh, then, if ye maun gae,
gae!... We're a' ane! There's the kelpie pool for a'."

"We'll stop a bit on the way back," said Alexander. He spoke in a
wheedling, kindly voice, for he and Mother Binning were good friends.

"Do that then," she said. "I hae a hansel o' coffee by me. I'll mak
twa cups, for I'll warrant that ye'll baith need it!"

The air was indeed growing colder when the two came at last upon the
moor that ran down to the Kelpie's Pool. Furze and moss and ling, a
wild country stretched around without trees or house or moving form.
The bare sunshine took on a remote, a cool and foreign, aspect. The
small singing of the wind in whin and heather came from a thin, eery
world. Down below them they saw the dark little tarn, the Kelpie's
Pool. It was very clear, but dark, with a bottom of peat. Around it
grew rushes and a few low willows. The two sat upon an outcropping of
stone and gazed down upon it.

"It's a gey lonely place," said Alexander. "Now I like it as well or
better than I do the cave, and now I would leave it far behind me!"

"I like the cave best. This is a creepy place."

"Once I let myself out at Glenfernie without any knowing and came here
by night