standing, and so do my
own folk never.

"'It is a woman, Laird Stennis,' quoth I, 'that hath set herself down
to die by your burnside.'

"'Die,' cried he, with a queer scream most like a frighted hen flying
down off the baulks, 'what word is that to speak? A woman dead by my
burnside--what richt had she there? Who has taken such a liberty with
Hobby Stennis?'

"'Nay, that you can come and see for yourself,' said I, a little
nettled at the carle's hardness of heart. So the auld miser, bent and
stiff, came hirpling barehead down the path, and behind him, looking
most uncanny, danced Daft Jeremy, combing his hair with a weaver's
heckle and muttering to himself. The morning sunshine fell fair on
this strange couple, and when she saw him the little maid let go my
hand and ran to Laird Stennis. She would have taken his hand, but he
pushed her off. Whereat, she being affronted, the witch caught at his
stick and pulled it away from him before he could resist. Then she gat
astride and played horses with it on the green grass of the burnside
dell. It was like an incantation.

"But without heeding her the old man went to the woman, and, lifting up
her head, looked steadfastly in her face.

"'God in his heaven be merciful,' he cried, 'it is my daughter Bell!'

"Then the 'mounster' laughed loud and long, and wrapping his 'heckle'
in a wisp of paper, he played a tune upon it with his mouth, dancing
round and crying, 'There's her right for ye--ye said she hadna a right,
Laird Stennis! Ye were that hard ye refused the woman room to die at
your dykeside. But Bell has come hame to claim her own. Coffin and
clay--coffin and clay! Sax foot of clean kirkyard sods! Faith, I wish
a' Daft Jeremy's enemies had the same, nae mair and nae less. But it's
as weel as it is, Laird Stennis--for Jeremy cannot be doing with grown
women about the noose o' Breckonside. And it's him that has the say
now, ye ken!'

"But the old man answered nothing, good or ill. He only stood and
looked down at his daughter, muttering to himself words that sounded
like 'Bell has comed hame.... My bairn has comed back to me at the
last!'

"So in time the miser buried his daughter decently, and took the little
lass hame to him to bring up. But when this came to be talked of in
the countryside, there was a well-to-do woman in Dumfries toon, a
Mistress Comly or Comline, that was some kin to Bell Stennis through
her mother, and when she heard o' the