nt amang the hill-folk. Weel ken I the kind o' her.
To the hill, lads, and we will burn the randy oot, even as I said. I'll
learn the Hutton folk to play wi' the beard o' St. Johnstone."

"Foul Annandale thief!" said I, but stilly to myself, for who was I to
stand against all of them? Yet I could see that, save and except the
chief's own ragged tail, there were none of the soldiers that thought
this kind of work becoming.

Ere he mounted, Westerhall took the poor, pitiful body, and with his
foot despitefully tumbled it into a moss-hole.

"I'll show them what it is to streek dead Whigs like honest men, and row
them dainty in seventeen hunder linen on my land!" cried Westerhall.

And indeed it seemed a strange and marvellous Providence to me, that
young Isobel Allison, when she wove in that name with many hopes and
prayers, the blood of her body flushing her cheek with a maiden's shy
expectation, should have been weaving in the ruin of her house and the
breaking of her heart.

Now the cot of the widow Herries was a bonny place. So I believe, but of
its beauty I will not speak. For I never was back that way again--and
what is more, I never mean to be.

We came to the gavel end of the house. Westerhall struck it with his
sword.

"We'll sune hae this doon!" he said to us that followed. Then louder he
cried, "Mistress, are ye within?" as the custom of the country is.

A decent woman with a white widow's cap on her head was scraping out a
dish of hen's meat as we rode to the door. When she saw us on our horses
about the close, the wooden bowl fell from her hands and played clash on
the floor.

"Aye, my bonny woman," quoth Westerhall, "this comes o' keeping Whigs
aboot your farm-toon. Whatna Whig rebel was it ye harboured? Oot wi't,
Bell Allison! Was it the brither o' ye, that cursed spawn o' the low
country? Doon on your knees an' tell me, else it is your last hour on
the earth."

The poor woman fell on her knees and clasped her hands.

"O Westerha'!" she stammered, "I'll no lee till ye. It was but a puir
Westland man that we kenned not the name o'. We fand him i' the fields,
and for very God's pity brocht him hame to our door and laid him on the
bed. He never spak' 'yea' or 'nay' to us all the time he abode in our
hoose-place, and so passed without a word late yestreen."

"Lying Whig!" cried Westerhall, "who was it that found him? Whatna yin
o' your rebel sons--chasing up hill and doon dale after your blackguard