stayed.

"Do you think I ran all the way from the bathing cove for nothing?" she said. "Save yourselves, lads. Do as I bid you and at once."

They went, though it was not with the best grace in the world. Stair wore a scowl on his handsome face as he slung his gun over his shoulder. Only Fergus thanked her for having come to warn them.

"Hold your tongue," said Patsy, peremptorily, "get out of sight. Keep yourselves safe. That is the best thanks, and all that I ask for from you."

So it came about that fifteen minutes later, Lieutenant Everard of the Britomart, disembarking with Captain Laurence of the Dragoons and the Superintendent of Enlistments, Mr. Ebenezer McClure, came upon a picture framed in the doorway of the Bothy of Blairmore. Patsy had spread Jean Garland's scarlet sash to its broadest, and so had been able to let down her skirt of blue linen till it came to almost her ankles, above which the yellow cross-gartering of the sandals was diamonded in the Greek fashion her Uncle Julian had taught her.

Patsy had found piles of unwashen dishes and spoons, for the boys of the Glenanmays family depended for cleaning up upon uncertain, semi-occasional visits, from one or other of their sisters. What they wanted at the time they took out and washed in the pleasant tumble of the hill brook which passed their door on its way down to meet the Abbey Burn a little above Uncle Julian's house. The rest they left.

The two officers of His Majesty stood a moment too astonished for speech. This was not at all what they had come out to find, nor what their men had been posted all about the bothy to secure in case of an attempt to escape.

Patsy nodded brightly to her visitors, and the officers saluted, without, however, abandoning their gravity. The third man, a long, lean, hook-nosed fellow with curly black hair plastered about his brow and tied in a greasy fall of ringlets on his shoulders, frowned and growled. He had understood at once that the game was up. If the authority had been his, he would have had the sailors and marines scouring the hillside and searching every rift in the rocks.

"May I ask you," said Captain Laurence, a tall, good-looking, blond officer, bowing to Patsy, "where the young men Garland are to be found? We had come with warrants for their taking. This is His Majesty's press."

"Ah," said Patsy easily, "so you are the press-gang—let me look at you. I have never seen a 'press' before. Where are your handcuffs? Which of you is the chief executioner? You tie up the poor fellows, they tell me."

"I must ask you to explain your presence here," said Captain Laurence, who had grown hot all over at being spoken to in this fashion.

"This is the Maid Marian of the gang," suggested Lieutenant Everard of the Britomart, with a sneer. "I have seen something like this get up in the Gulf of Corinth."

"Then you are a lucky man," said the captain of dragoons. "All the same I must ask you to account for your presence here, young lady."

"Rather might I ask you to explain yours," said Patsy, breathing on a glass, rubbing it, and holding it up to the light. "You are trespassing on my father's ground—and from what I see of your arms, in pursuit of game!"

"And who is your father, madame?"

"I have quite as good a right to ask you for the name of yours!"

The officers laughed and glanced at each other.

"Not quite," said the dragoon; "you observe that we are on special duty—"

"I should indeed hope so," said Patsy, standing up with her drying-cloth in her hand and shaking it contemptuously at them. "Special duty, indeed, that means the chasing of honest men and honest men's sons at the bidding of spies!"

"It is a duty which I perform as seldom as possible," said Captain Laurence. "Naturally I would rather be fighting the foes of my king and country, but as to that I am not consulted. Besides, the naval and military forces of the realm must be recruited in some way or other!"

"I should have thought that treating men like criminals was not the best way to make brave soldiers of them!"

"Tell us your father's name," broke in Lieutenant Everard, a small dark man, very nervous and restless, with eyes that winked continually and impatient fingers that fiddled endlessly with the tassel of his sword-hilt. "We will not be put off longer. The men are escaping all the time while you are left here to hold us in talk. If he be, as you say, a gentleman and a magistrate, he will give us assistance in our search, according to his oath."

"My father's name is Adam Ferris, of Cairn Ferris," said Patsy, pleasantly. "But whether he will be at your service or not, I cannot tell. As for me, if you are the gallant gentlemen you look, you will bring me a pailful of fresh water from the spring—see, yonder at the foot of the rock—ah, thank you!"

"Captain, we are wasting valuable time," insinuated Eben McClure, the superintendent of recruitment, touching the officer lightly on the arm.

"Keep your dirty fingers off my sleeve, sir, and go to the devil. I command here. Miss Ferris, I beg your pardon. I may as well fetch a pair when I am about it."

Captain Laurence had noticed that the second pail contained very little water. So with a quick heave he sent a shining spout in the direction of the spy, who was drenched from knee to shoe-buckle. Then he caught up the pails with a clash of their iron handles and with the easiest swagger in the world took the direction of the spring, his spurs jingling as he went. A sailor on guard behind the rock would have aided him to fill them, but he told the man to keep his station, and dipped for himself. He brought them back brimming and with a courtly bow inquired of Patsy if she had any further commands for him, because if not he must go about the duties of his service.

Patsy thanked him with the distinctive simplicity of one who has officers of dragoons to carry water for her every day of her life. But she went to the door and showed Captain Laurence the way over the ridges to the house of Cairn Ferris. "My father is likely to be at home," she said, "but if you do not find him, he is sure to be at my Uncle Julian's at the Abbey. You have only to follow the glen."

"Your uncle?" said Captain Laurence, "your father's brother?"

"No, my mother's," said Patsy. "Mr. Julian Wemyss of Auchenyards and Wellwood—and the best man in the world—the wisest too!"

"I shall have pleasure in making the acquaintance of your uncle; his family (and that of your mother) is from my part of Scotland."

He bowed low and withdrew. The lieutenant of the Britomart and the Superintendent of Enlistments were in a state of incipient lunacy. Oh, the fool! They would break him if they could. They would write to the Secretary. They would—but as they growled and cursed behind him, Eben McClure suddenly remembered that Julian Wemyss and my Lord Erskine were first cousins, and that so long as the government remained in office, it would be advisable to stand well with all friends and neighbours of the Secretary, Erskines, Wemysses, Melvilles, wherever found. He was unpopular enough in the country as it was. He could not afford to be "ill seen" at headquarters as well.

Patsy found herself left alone in the bothy. But she knew that the two men who had not spoken would certainly leave some hidden spy to watch whether the young men returned, or if she attempted to communicate with them.

Therefore she did not hasten. Jean would arrive before long with the garments in which she had left home, and which she had shed, as it were providentially, to be able to run the better across the sands of Killantringan and the heathery fastnesses of the Wild of Blairmore.

Hardly had Patsy gotten the bothy to her liking—or something like it—when Jean arrived, full of wonder and joy. She carried a parcel under her arm, done up carefully in her neckerchief.

"It is a pity to change," she said, "you will never look so pretty