olish ones ran to Gretna to
get married--I with them in the coach. But I had to tramp it back on
my own feet, with Miser Hobby's malediction on my head as well as on
theirs. You see he had spent money on the young fellow's commission
hoping to get him out of the road, as soon as he suspected what was in
the wind between Bell and him.

"But the regiment stayed on in Longtown just over the borders, and
nearly every day Frank Stennis and a company would come through the
countryside with feathers waving bravely in their bonnets, drawing in
the silly young by the glint of their accoutrements, or wiling them to
list by the merry noise of the pipe and drum that went before them and
set the pulses jumping even in weak women's hearts.

"But after Bell took the road to Gretna, and the white cat by the
Breckonside was left lonely, the miser never uttered word, but sat with
shut mouth at the weaving of the wonderful flowered napery, the secret
of which he alone possessed. And if he could not weave himself a new
daughter with all his skill, at least he kept himself so busy that he
seldom minded the one he had lost.

"And then he took to leaving his weaving, which nobody could do as well
as he, and trying a new trade--that of cattle dealing and droving. At
least, so it was said. At any rate Laird Stennis would shut up the
cottage, and the sound of the weary shuttle would cease by the
waterside. He would be seen riding to every market, cattle mart, horse
fair, lamb sale, wool sale, displenishing-roup within fifty mile, his
shoulders bent weaver fashion and his thin shanks legginged in untanned
leather.

"But what was the wonder of the folk of Breckonside to see Laird
Stennis, who could hardly abide his own kith and kin, suddenly bring a
great stalwart colt of a ne'er-do-well, Jeremy Orrin by name, home to
his house. For the creature was hardly held accountable for his
actions. He had once killed a man in a brawl at a fair and been tried
for his life, but had gotten off as being half an idiot, or what the
folk about the south of the Cheviots called a 'natural.'

"The two of them brawled together, and drank and carried on to be the
scandal of the place, till something happened--it was never known
what--but Miser Stennis was laid up with a crack in his skull, and the
Mad Jeremy tended him, gentle and tender as a mother they said. But so
fierce with any one else that none, even the doctor, ventured near the
cottage.

"Sti