e was talking about. It was generally arrant nonsense
that he told them. Once Robina asked:

"Wha tellit ye that rubbish, Bildy?"

"The coo," he gravely answered.

On a damp, misty morning he had gone out as usual to drive the cow out
to the meadow to graze. Widow Lamont, from her place opposite the
window, noticed that they did not pass out in the customary way, and
notified the fact to Robina. The latter accordingly ran out at once to
inquire the reason of the delay. She found Bildy quietly fastening the
door of the byre before returning to the house.

"Ye havna' fetched oot the coo!" she exclaimed. "Gae in an' drive her
oot, Bildy!"

"Na, na," replied he, solemnly shaking his head. "She says it's ower
cauld the day. She'll bide inside."

Bildy's hero-worship of my brother increased as time went by. He
regularly came to Mass, and obedient to Robina's instructions sat still
and looked "straicht at Father Fleming." On one particular Sunday,
when we had a priest staying with us (an old friend of Val's), the
latter invited him to preach. This did not suit Bildy at all. After
Mass he walked home alone, not waiting for Robina, who was chatting
with her neighbors outside the church, and showed by his manner that
something was amiss. Widow Lamont put down her book, in which she had
been piously reading her "Prayers for Mass," and accosted him with the
usual formula:

"Weel, Bildy, what kind o' preachin' had ye the day?"

But the answer was not that which they took a simple pleasure in
drawing from him usually. Bildy began to bite his hand--a trick he had
when annoyed.

"That's nae preachin'," he cried indignantly. "Yon monnie canna'
preach! Wha's the reason Father Fleming canna' preach the day? Eh!"
(with withering contempt.) "Sic a monnie preach!"

The diminutive, in Bildy's phraseology, implied depreciation; that was
why he stigmatized a regular six-footer as a "monnie."

When Doddy came to Ardmuirland, Bildy discovered his real vocation!
Doddy--or, in English, Georgie--was the orphan child of Robina's
sister. His father had married a second wife and had gone out to
Canada, and Widow Lamont had insisted upon having the little chap with
her; for his father and step-mother were both Protestants, and Doddy
stood little chance of being reared in the faith of his baptism. So
the man agreed, and undertook to pay a trifle weekly for the child's
keep, until he could earn something for himself.

D