W-WHITE LINEN
THE WAITING GIRL, JEANIE AMOS 264
PETER FARREL 280
AN OLD DALKEITH BODY 312
THE LAZY CORNER, DALKEITH 344

* * * * *

The sun rises bright in France,
And fair sets he;
But he has tint the blithe blink he had
In my ain countree.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

CHAPTER ONE--IN THE TIME OF MY GRANDFATHER

Some of the rich houses and great folk pretend to have histories of the
auncientness of their families, which they can count back on their
fingers almost to the days of Noah's ark, and King Fergus the First; but
whatever may spunk out after on this point, I am free to confess, with a
safe conscience, in the meantime, that it is not in my power to come up
within sight of them; having never seen or heard tell of anybody in our
connexion, further back than auld granfaither, that I mind of when a
laddie; and who it behoves to have belonged by birthright to some parish
or other; but where-away, gude kens. James Batter mostly blinded both
his eyes, looking all last winter for one of our name in the Book of
Martyrs, to make us proud of; but his search, I am free to confess, worse
than failed--as the only man of the name he could find out was a Sergeant
Jacob Wauch, that lost his lug and his left arm, fighting like a Russian
Turk against the godly, at the bloody battle of the Pentland Hills.

Auld granfaither died when I was a growing callant, some seven or eight
years old; yet I mind him full well; it being a curious thing how early
such matters take hold of one's memory. He was a straught, tall, old
man, with a shining bell-pow, and reverend white locks hanging down about
his haffets; a Roman nose, and two cheeks blooming through the winter of
his long age like roses, when, poor body, he was sand-blind with
infirmity. In his latter days he was hardly able to crawl about alone;
but used to sit resting himself on the truff seat before our door,
leaning forward his head on his staff, and finding a kind of pleasure in
feeling the beams of God's own sun beaking on him. A blackbird, that he
had tamed, hung above his head in a whand-cage of my father's making; and
he had taken a pride in learning it to whistle two three turns of his own
favourite sang, "Oure the water to Charlie."

I recollect, as well as yesterday, that, on the Sundays, he wore a