taken; for that instant Gibbie flashed from the
face of the rock head foremost, like a fishing bird, into the lake.
Donal gave a cry, and ran to the edge of the water, accompanied by
Oscar, who, all the time, had showed no anxiety, but had stood
wagging his tail, and uttering now and then a little
half-disappointed whine; neither now were his motions as he ran
other than those of frolic and expectancy. When they reached the
loch, there was Gibbie already but a few yards from the only
possible landing-place, swimming with one hand, while in the other
arm he held a baby lamb, its head lying quite still on his shoulder:
it had been stunned by the fall, but might come round again. Then
first Donal began to perceive that the cratur was growing an
athlete. When he landed, he gave Donal a merry laugh of welcome,
but without stopping flew up the hill to take the lamb to its
mother. Fresh from the icy water, he ran so fast that it was all
Donal could do to keep up with him.

The Deid Pot, then, taught Gibbie what swimming it could, which was
not much, and what diving it could, which was more; but the nights
of the following summer, when everybody on mountain and valley were
asleep, and the moon shone, he would often go down to the Daur, and
throwing himself into its deepest reaches, spend hours in lonely
sport with water and wind and moon. He had by that time learned
things knowing which a man can never be lonesome.

The few goats on the mountain were for a time very inimical to him.
So often did they butt him over, causing him sometimes severe
bruises, that at last he resolved to try conclusions with them; and
when next a goat made a rush at him, he seized him by the horns and
wrestled with him mightily. This exercise once begun, he provoked
engagements, until his strength and aptitude were such and so well
known, that not a billy-goat on Glashgar would have to do with him.
But when he saw that every one of them ran at his approach, Gibbie,
who could not bear to be in discord with any creature, changed his
behaviour towards them, and took equal pains to reconcile them to
him--nor rested before he had entirely succeeded.

Every time Donal came home, he would bring some book of verse with
him, and, leading Gibbie to some hollow, shady or sheltered as the
time required, would there read to him ballads, or songs, or verse
more stately, as mood or provision might suggest. The music, the
melody and the cadence and the harm