.'

'Ye'll do naething o' the kin', Betty. Are ye gaein' to turn clash-pyet
(tell-tale) at your age?'

'What ken ye aboot my age? There's never a man-body i' the toon kens
aught aboot my age.'

'It's ower muckle for onybody to min' upo' (remember), is 't, Betty?'

'Dinna be ill-tongued, Robert, or I'll jist gang benn the hoose to the
mistress.'

'Betty, wha began wi' bein' ill-tongued? Gin ye tell my grandmither that
I gaed oot the nicht, I'll gang to the schuilmaister o' Muckledrum, and
get a sicht o' the kirstenin' buik; an' gin yer name binna there, I'll
tell ilkabody I meet 'at oor Betty was never kirstened; and that'll be a
sair affront, Betty.'

'Hoot! was there ever sic a laddie!' said Betty, attempting to laugh
it off. 'Be sure ye be back afore tay-time, 'cause yer grannie 'ill be
speirin' efter ye, and ye wadna hae me lee aboot ye?'

'I wad hae naebody lee about me. Ye jist needna lat on 'at ye hear
her. Ye can be deif eneuch when ye like, Betty. But I s' be back afore
tay-time, or come on the waur.'

Betty, who was in far greater fear of her age being discovered than of
being unchristianized in the search, though the fact was that she knew
nothing certain about the matter, and had no desire to be enlightened,
feeling as if she was thus left at liberty to hint what she
pleased,--Betty, I say, never had any intention of going 'benn the hoose
to the mistress.' For the threat was merely the rod of terror which she
thought it convenient to hold over the back of the boy, whom she always
supposed to be about some mischief except he were in her own presence
and visibly reading a book: if he were reading aloud, so much the
better. But Robert likewise kept a rod for his defence, and that was
Betty's age, which he had discovered to be such a precious secret that
one would have thought her virtue depended in some cabalistic manner
upon the concealment of it. And, certainly, nature herself seemed to
favour Betty's weakness, casting such a mist about the number of
her years as the goddesses of old were wont to cast about a wounded
favourite; for some said Betty was forty, others said she was
sixty-five, and, in fact, almost everybody who knew her had a different
belief on the matter.

By this time Robert had conquered the difficulty of induing boots as
hard as a thorough wetting and as thorough a drying could make them, and
now stood prepared to go. His object in setting out was to find the boy
whom his grandmot