The three MacWalter children were sitting at the table taking their porridge and milk with horn spoons.  The ham was skirling and frizzling in the pan.  It gave out a good smell, but that did not cost Kit Kennedy a thought.  He knew that that was not for the like of him.  He would as soon have thought of wearing a white linen shirt or having the lairdship of a barony, as of getting ham to his breakfast.  But after his morning’s work, he had a sore heart enough to miss his porridge.

But he knew that it was no use to argue with Mistress MacWalter.  So he went outside and walked up and down in the snow.  He heard the clatter of dishes as the children, Rob, Jock, and Meysie MacWalter, finished their eating, and Meysie set their bowls one within the other and carried them into the back-kitchen to be ready for the washing.  Meysie was nearly ten, and was Kit’s very good friend.  Jock and Rob, on the other hand, ran races who should have most tales to tell of his misdoings at home, and also at the village school.

“Kit Kennedy, ye scoondrel, come in this meenit an’ get the dishes washen afore yer uncle tak’s the ‘Buik,’"[7] cried Mistress MacWalter, who was a religious woman, and came forward regularly at the half-yearly communion in the kirk of Duntochar.  She did not so much grudge Kit his meal of meat, but she had her own theories of punishment.  So she called Kit in to wash the dishes from which he had never eaten.  Meysie stood beside them, and dried for him, and her little heart was sore.  There was something in the bottom of some of them, and this Kit ate quickly and furtively—­Meysie keeping a watch that her mother was not coming.  The day was now fairly broken, but the sun had not yet risen.

[Footnote 7:  Has family worship.]

“Tak’ the pot oot an’ clean it.  Gie the scrapins’ to the dogs!” ordered Mistress MacWalter.

Kit obeyed.  Tyke and Tweed followed with their tails over their backs.  The white wastes glimmered in the grey of the morning.  It was rosy where the sun was going to rise behind the great ridge of Ben Arrow, which looked, smoothly covered with snow as it was, exactly like a gigantic turnip-pit.  At the back of the milkhouse Kit set down the pot, and with a horn spoon which he took from his pocket he shared the scraping of the pot equally into three parts, dividing it mathematically by lines drawn up from the bottom.  It was a good big pot, and there was a good deal of scrapings, which was lucky for both Tweed and Tyke, as well as good for Kit Kennedy.

Now, this is the way that Kit Kennedy—­that kinless loon, without father or mother—­won his breakfast.

He had hardly finished and licked his spoon, the dogs sitting on their haunches and watching every rise and fall of the horn, when a well-known voice shrilled through the air—­

“Kit Kennedy, ye lazy, ungrateful hound, come ben to the “Buik.”  Ye are no better than the beasts that perish, regairdless baith o’ God and man!”