ked about the
causeways," answered Wat readily enough, making him an awkward bow.

"Tell me the story, rascal," said the tall man, whom I now knew for
Roger McGhie of Balmaghie. "I love a story, so that it be not too often
told."

Now I wondered to hear Wat Gordon of Lochinvar take the word "rascal" so
meekly, standing there on the road. It was, indeed, very far from being
his wont.

However, he began obediently enough to tell the story which Roger McGhie
asked of him.

For a Kate of the Black Eyebrows in the plot makes many a mighty
difference to the delicateness of a man's stomach.

"The story was only a bairn's ploy that I heard tell of, when I was in
town with my lady," he said, "nothing worth your honour's attention, yet
will I tell it from the printed sheet which for a bodle I bought."

"Let me be the judge of that," said the other.

"Well then, laird, there was in the hospital of George Heriot, late
jeweller to the King, a wheen loon scholar lads who had an ill-will at a
mastiff tyke, that lived in a barrel in the yard and keeped the
outermost gate. They suspected this dog of treason against the person of
his Majesty, and especially of treasonable opinions as to the succession
of the Duke of York. And, indeed, they had some ground for their
suspicion, for the mastiff growled one day at the King's High
Commissioner when he passed that way, and even bit a piece out of the
calf of one of the Duke of York's servitors that wore his Highness'
livery, at the time when his Grace was an indweller in Holyrood House."

The eye of the tall grave man changed. A look of humorous severity came
into it.

"Be cautious how you speak of dignities!" he said to Wat.

"Well," said Wat, "at any rate, this evil-minded tyke held an office of
trust, patently within the meaning of the act, and these loon lads of
Heriot's ordained him duly to take the Test, or be turned out of his
place of dignity and profit.

"So they formed a Summary Court, and the tyke was called and
interrogated in due form. The silly cur answered all their questions
with silence, which was held as a sign of a guilty conscience. And this
would have been registered as a direct refusal, but that one of the
loons, taking it upon him to be the tyke's advocate, argued that silence
commonly gave consent, and that the Test had not been presented to his
client in the form most plausible and agreeable to his tender stomach.

"The debate lasted long, but at last it