e taken with the picture we presented, of a poor, sick,
overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. She drew quite near, and
stood leaning with her back on the next table.

"What's like wrong with him?" said she at last.

Alan turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of fury. "Wrong?"
cries he. "He's walked more hundreds of miles than he has hairs upon his
chin, and slept oftener in wet heather than dry sheets. Wrong, quo' she!
Wrong enough, I would think! Wrong, indeed!" and he kept grumbling to
himself, as he fed me, like a man ill-pleased.

"He's young for the like of that," said the maid.

"Ower young," said Alan, with his back to her.

"He would be better riding," says she.

"And where could I get a horse to him?" cried Alan, turning on her with
the same appearance of fury. "Would ye have me steal?"

I thought this roughness would have sent her off in dudgeon, as indeed
it closed her mouth for the time. But my companion knew very well what
he was doing; and, for as simple as he was in some things of life, had a
great fund of roguishness in such affairs as these.

"Ye needna tell me," she said at last--"ye're gentry."

"Well," said Alan, softened a little (I believe against his will) by
this artless comment, "and suppose we were? Did ever you hear that
gentrice put money in folk's pockets?"

She sighed at this, as if she were herself some disinherited great lady.
"No," says she, "that's true indeed."

I was all this while chafing at the part I played, and sitting
tongue-tied between shame and merriment; but somehow at this I could
hold in no longer, and bade Alan let me be, for I was better already. My
voice stuck in my throat, for I ever hated to take part in lies; but my
very embarrassment helped on the plot, for the lass no doubt set down my
husky voice to sickness and fatigue.

"Has he nae friends?" said she, in a tearful voice.

"That has he so!" cried Alan, "if we could but win to them!--friends and
rich friends, beds to lie in, food to eat, doctors to see to him--and
here he must tramp in the dubs and sleep in the heather like a
beggar-man."

"And why that?" says the lass.

"My dear," said Alan, "I canna very safely say; but I'll tell ye what
I'll do instead," says he, "I'll whistle ye a bit tune." And with that
he leaned pretty far over the table, and in a mere breath of a whistle,
but with a wonderful pretty sentiment, gave her a few bars of "Charlie
is my darling."

"Wheesht,"