looked gey like a galo-shan in't, but I maun be the bonny doo mysel'.
And I'm no that wee neither, for it's ticht aboot the back."

Annapla thought her diminutive admirer adorable; she stood raptly gazing
on him, with her dish-clout dripping on the floor.

"I wonder if there's no' a note or twa o' the New Bank i' the pouches,"
said Mungo, and began to search. Something in one of the pockets rustled
to the touch, and with a face of great expectancy he drew forth what
proved to be a letter. The seal was broken, there was neither an address
nor the superscription of the writer; the handwriting was a faint
Italian, betokening a lady--there was no delicate scrupulosity about the
domestic, and the good Mungo unhesitatingly indulged himself.

"It's no' exactly a note," said he, contracting his brows above the
document. Not for the first time Annapla regretted her inability to
read, as she craned over his shoulder to see what evidently created much
astonishment in her future lord.

"Weel, that bates a'!" he cried when he had finished, and he turned,
visibly flushing, even through his apple-red complexion, to see Annapla
at his shoulder.

"It's a guid thing the Sicht's nae use for English write," said he,
replacing the letter carefully in the pocket whence it had come.
"This'll gae back to himsel', and naebody be nane the wiser o't for
Mungo Byde."

For half an hour he busied himself with aiding Annapla at the
preparation of dinner, suddenly become silent as a consequence of what
the letter had revealed to him, and then he went out to prepare his boat
for his trip to town.

Annapla did not hesitate a moment; she fished out the letter and hurried
with it to her master, less, it must be owned, from a desire to inform
him, than from a womanly wish to share a secret that had apparently been
of the greatest interest to Mungo.

Doom took it from her hands in an abstraction, for he was whelmed with
the bitter prospect of imminent farewells; he carelessly scanned the
sheet with half-closed eyes, and was well through perusing it before
he realised that it had any interest. He began at the beginning again,
caught the meaning of a sentence, sat bolt upright in the chair
where Annapla had found him lolling, and finished with eagerness and
astonishment.

Where had she got this? She hesitated to tell him that it had been
pilfered from the owner's pocket, and intimated that she had picked it
up outside.

"Good woman," said he in G