He filled his arms with them, and went to the turnip-cutter.  Soon the crunch, crunch of the knives was to be heard as Kit drove round the handle, and afterwards the frosty sound of the square finger-lengths of cut turnip falling into the basket.  The sheep had gathered about him, silently for the most part.  Tyke sat still and dignified now, guarding the lantern, which the sheep were inclined to butt over.  Kit heard the animals knocking against the empty troughs with their hard little trotters, and snuffing about them with their nostrils.

He lifted the heavy basket, heaved it against his breast, and made his way down the long line of troughs.  The sheep crowded about him, shoving and elbowing each other like so many human beings, callously and selfishly.  His first basket did not go far, as he shovelled it in great handfuls into the troughs, and Kit came back for another.  It was tiring work, and the day was dawning grey when he had finished.  Then he made the circuit of the field, to assure himself that all was right, and that there were no stragglers lying frozen in corners, or turned avel[6] in the lirks of the knowes.

[Footnote 6:  A sheep turns avel when it so settles itself upon its back in a hollow of the hill that it cannot rise.]

Then he went back to the onstead.  The moon had gone down, and the farm-buildings loomed very cold and bleak out of the frost-fog.

Mistress MacWalter was on foot.  She had slept nearly two hours, being half-an-hour too long, after wearying herself with raising Kit; and, furthermore, she had risen with a very bad temper.  But this was no uncommon occurrence.

She was in the byre with a lantern of her own.  She was talking to herself, and “flyting on” the patient cows, who now stood chewing the cuds of their breakfast.  She slapped them apart with her stool, applied savagely to their flanks.  She even lifted her foot to them, which affronts a self-respecting cow as much as a human being.

In this spirit she greeted Kit when he appeared.

“Where hae ye been, ye careless deevil, ye?  A guid mind hae I to gie ye my milking-stool owre yer crown, ye senseless, menseless blastie!  What ill-contriving tricks hae ye been at, that ye haena gotten the kye milkit?”

“I hae been feeding the sheep at the pits, aunt,” said Kit Kennedy.

“Dinna tell me,” cried his aunt; “ye hae been wasting your time at some o’ your ploys.  What do ye think that John MacWalter, silly man, feeds ye for?  He has plenty o’ weans o’ his ain to provide for withoot meddling wi’ the like o’ you—­careless, useless, fushionless blagyaird that ye are.”

Mistress Mac Walter had sat down on her stool to the milking by this time.  But her temper was such that she was milking unkindly, and Crummie felt it.  Also she had not forgotten, in her slow-moving bovine way, that she had been kicked.  So in her turn she lifted her foot and let drive, punctuating a gigantic semi-colon with her cloven hoof just on that part of the person of Mistress MacWalter where it was fitted to take most effect.