[Footnote 5:  The fruit of the dog-rose is, when large and red, locally called a “buckie.”]

Then there was a stirring on the floor, a creaking of the ancient joists.  It was Kit putting on his clothes.  He always knew where each article lay—­dark or shine, it made no matter to him.  He had not an embarrassment of apparel.  He had a suit for wearing, and his “other clothes.”  These latter were, however, now too small for him, and so he could not go to the kirk at Duntochar.  But his aunt had laid them aside for her son Rob, a growing lad.  She was a thoughtful, provident woman.

“Be gettin’ doon the stair, my man, and look slippy,” cried his aunt, as a parting shot, “and see carefully to the kye.  It’ll be as weel for ye.”

Kit had on his trousers by this time.  His waistcoat followed.  But before he put on his coat he knelt down to say his prayer.  He had promised his mother to say it then.  If he put on his coat he was apt to forget, in his haste to get out-of-doors where the beasts were friendly.  So between his waistcoat and his coat he prayed.  The angels were up at the time, and they heard, and went and told the Father who hears prayer.  They said that in a garret at a hill-farm a boy was praying with his knees in a snow-drift—­a boy without father or mother.

“Ye lazy guid-for-naething!  Gin ye are no’ doon the stairs in three meenits, no’ a drap o’ porridge or a sup o’ milk shall ye get the day!”

So Kit got on his feet, and made a queer little shuffling noise with them, to induce his aunt to think that he was bestirring himself.  So that is the way he had to finish his prayers—­on his feet, shuffling and dancing a break-down.  The angels saw, and smiled.  But they took it to the Father, just the same as if Kit Kennedy had been in church.  All save one, who dropped something that might have been a pearl and might have been a tear.  Then he also went within the inner court, and told that which he had seen.

But to Kit there was nothing to grumble about.  He was pleased, if any one was.  His clogs did not let in the snow.  His coat was rough, but warm.  If any one was well off, and knew it, it was Kit Kennedy.

So he came down-stairs, if stairs they could be called that were but the rounds of a ladder.  His aunt heard him.

“Keep awa’ frae the kitchen, ye thievin’ loon!  There’s nocht there for ye—­takin’ the bairns’ meat afore they’re up!”

But Kit was not hungry, which, in the circumstances, was as well.  Mistress MacWalter had caught him red-handed on one occasion.  He was taking a bit of hard oatcake out of the basket of “farles” which swung from the black, smoked beam in the corner.  Kit had cause to remember the occasion.  Ever since, she had cast it up to him.  She was a master at casting up, as her husband knew.  But Kit was used to it, and he did not care.  A thick stick was all that he cared for, and that only for three minutes; but he minded when Mistress MacWalter abused his mother, who was dead.