startled hares into the house. Gibbie, in his
atmosphere of human grace and tenderness, little thought what clouds
of foolish fancies, rising from the valleys below, had, by their
distorting vapours, made of him an object of terror to those whom at
the very first sight he would have loved and served. Amongst these,
perhaps the most afraid of him were the children of the gamekeeper,
for they lived on the very foot of the haunted hill, near the bridge
and gate of Glashruach; and the laird himself happened one day to be
witness of their fear. He inquired the cause, and yet again was his
enlightened soul vexed by the persistency with which the shadows of
superstition still hung about his lands. Had he been half as
philosophical as he fancied himself, he might have seen that there
was not necessarily a single film of superstition involved in the
belief that a savage roamed a mountain--which was all that Mistress
Mac Pholp, depriving the rumour of its richer colouring, ventured to
impart as the cause of her children's perturbation; but anything a
hair's-breadth out of the common, was a thing hated of Thomas
Galbraith's soul, and whatever another believed which he did not
choose to believe, he set down at once as superstition. He held
therefore immediate communication with his gamekeeper on the
subject, who in his turn was scandalized that his children should
have thus proved themselves unworthy of the privileges of their
position, and given annoyance to the liberal soul of their master,
and took care that both they and his wife should suffer in
consequence. The expression of the man's face as he listened to the
laird's complaint, would not have been a pleasant sight to any lover
of Gibbie; but it had not occurred either to master or man that the
offensive being whose doubtful existence caused the scandal, was the
same towards whom they had once been guilty of such brutality; nor
would their knowledge of the fact have been favourable to Gibbie.
The same afternoon, the laird questioned his tenant of the Mains
concerning his cottars; and was assured that better or more
respectable people were not in all the region of Gormgarnet.

When Robert became aware, chiefly through the representations of his
wife and Donal, of Gibbie's gifts of other kinds than those revealed
to himself by his good shepherding, he began to turn it over in his
mind, and by and by referred the question to his wife whether they
ought not to send the b