the slamming of doors in the night, and Jock McGilp and his message about the "turf being in"; and here it was coming round that these two had met then, and I somehow had helped to bring them together.

"I will be asking you to do me a service the night," I heard the girl say.

"I'm thinkin' that, my dear, will it be ridin' for the priest, for indeed you're such a wicked lass I see nae ither way for it. I canna aye be knockin' when your wickedness keeps me in the caul' . . . ."

"Come," she cried, rising, "come, for we will have been dallying too long, and I did give my word to Scaurdale. I will not be listening any more to your talk."

"Where fell ye across that grizzly dog, John, Laird o' Scaurdale?" said
Dan as they rose.

* * * * * *

So I waited until the hay was all quiet and the lovers gone, and I got the dogs and went after the deer.

Outside the dyke I found them herded, their sentinels posted like an army resting, and away they headed, the collies at their heels, and me racing through bracken and heather and burn, after seeing them clearing a rise and disappearing, the big antlers like branching trees. Away and away I followed, till the dogs' barking was faint in the night and the three lonely hills were looming before me, and I saw the wild-fire glimmer on the peat-bogs and the moon going down as I whistled and whistled for the dogs.

And as I waited I heard the thud, thud, thud of horses galloping, and then the jangle of bridle-chains, and I lay down in the heather. Two horsemen passed me, wrapped in their riding-cloaks, and after a while a light jumped out on the hillside, and I knew the horsemen had stopped at the old empty shepherd's house, and I made my way there, for since old McCurdy died the house had been empty. I could hear the dogs barking away among the hills, and the rustle of the night-folks among the dry heather as I cautiously rounded the "but and ben," and there at the door were the two horses that had passed me. Quietly I crawled into a clump of heather and lay a-watching, and turned in my mind everything I might be a witness to, and found no answer. Then, away behind me, I heard a horse neigh, and the tethered horses answered, and a gaunt figure, white-haired and martial, stalked through the door, and I knew John, Laird of Scaurdale, waited, he and his man.

I heard a laughing voice on the night wind.

"It's a great thing to have a lass on the saddle wi' ye, Belle, ye can kiss her at every stride," and Belle's answer must have been kissed into silence, for I never heard it.

There came Dan on our best horse, an upstanding raking bay, and in front of him was Belle with the wean in the tartan shawl. The servant lifted Belle from the saddle, and Dan, looking awkward in the glow from the window, held the tartan bundle, then handed it to the gipsy, and all of them went in, and I was left alone on my heather tussock. Maybe ten minutes passed, and the servant came out and led the horses to the back, where there was a sheepfold and a well, and I heard him drawing water, and in a little time he entered the house, an empty sack in his hand, and I knew the horses were at their feed, and crawled up to the lighted window and peered in. The Laird was striding up and down the narrow room, his fierce old face twitching, the body-servant stood by the door like a wooden man, and Dan, as though the ploy pleased him, smiled at the gipsy, who held the wean.

The Laird's words came clearly—

"She would have the false knave, she was afraid o' my stern lad and would have the carpet-knight—the poor wee lass; but she minded her cousin—she minded my boy at the end o' a' when she hated the Englishman. I ken fine how her pride suffered before she sent me word, but the word cam' at the hinder end. Belle," said he, stopping his march, "ye have done finely wi' your lad an' a'."

"It's not me he'll be lookin' at, sir," wi' a toss of her head.

"The bigger fool him; it was a' grist that cam' to my mill when I was mowing down the twenties."

"Ay, Laird," says Dan wi' a bold look, "I've heard it said ye kept the ministers in texts for many a day, and the sins o' the great made the poor folks' teeth water from wan Sunday till the next."

"I had thought them more concerned wi' brewing their whisky and poaching than in the inside o' a kirk," growled the Laird, for he was choleric when reminded of his past by any but his own conscience, which had turned in on itself, and grown morbid as a result.

"It's a grand place the kirk, sir; I've seen and heard enough there to keep me cheery a' week. There was the time when we walked there in droves, and would be takin' a look at the beasts in the parks as we went, and often the beasts would be turned on the roadside, for a man might buy on Monday what he only saw on Sunday. Once, going by Hector's, the lassies wi' their shoon in their hands, were walkin' easier barefit and savin' shoe leather, and a young Embro' leddy, wi' a hooped skirt wi' the braidin' like theek rope on a stack, and high-heeled shoon, looked disdainfu' at them. Well, well, the pigs were on the roadside at Hector's, and they kent the barefit lassies; but the grand lady they didna ken at all, and one caught her gown by the braidin' and scattered away reivin' and tearin', and set the lady spinning like a peerie, and the lassies laughed and cried 'suckie, suckie,' and put on their boots to go into the kirk, well put on, and in a rale godly frame o' mind."

Belle had the wean wrapped in the cloak the servant had provided and was croonin' ower it, and the body-servant was waitin' for orders, and there stood Dan and the Laird as though loath to part, and them on business that might mean worse than burnin' stackyards. And it came to me that Scaurdale was not the man to be cherishing any tinker's whelp, not even if he had fair claim to.

"And what lesson did ye get that day, Sir Churchman?"

"Pride goeth before a fall," says Dan, "but that was a bad day for me."

"And how?" cried Scaurdale, and I could see he was wasting time on purpose.

"Indeed it was no fault o' mine, for between the shepherds' dogs huntin' aboot till the church scaled, and the pigs lookin' for diversion, a kind o' hunt got up, and a pig came into the church wi' a' the collies in full cry and made a bonny to-do among the Elect. The poor beast made a breenge and got a hat on its snout, and then a fling o' its heid ended matters, and there was the pig in the deacon's hat, and sair pit aboot was the pig, and sairer the deacon.

"Aweel, I was reproved and reminded o' the time when I had had a sermon a' tae masel'; but the end crowned a', for I had killed an adder that morning on the road, and put the beast in my pouch for Hamish. In the middle o' the sermon, after the Gadarene swine and the dogs were outside, the adder somewie cam' alive and crawled on to the aisle, and the minister eyed it, and then me, and I felt hot and caul', for I didna ken o' any new evil that might hiv reached him, and I didna see the beast till the preacher stopped and pointed.

"'Man o' evil,' he cried, 'take the image o' your father and go hence,' and so I'm clean lost," said Dan, wi' a comical sigh.

I had just time to lay myself flat in the heather before the servant came out and walked to the top o' the rise. I could see the loom o' him against the skyline, for the moon was now very low, and then he whistled, and Dan came leading the horses, and the gipsy carrying the wean. I crawled to the rise but farther away, and prayed that the dogs had gone home and would not get wind o' me. For a while they stood, Dan and