to
make, though nevertheless I took the credit of the action as much by
silence as by speech.

Then Maisie Lennox came through the wood, and demeaning herself right
soberly, she held out her hand.

"Did you not see William before?" asked my mother, looking from one to
the other of us.

"Only at a distance, on his way to you," said Maisie, speaking in her
demure way.

It was in the little holding of Boatcroft by the side of the Dee, and
among the water meadows which gird the broad stream, that we found my
mother, Maisie Lennox, and little Margaret Wilson snugly settled. Their
position here was not one to be despised. They were safe for the time
being at least, upon the property of Roger McGhie. Every day the old man
passed their loaning-end. And though he knew that by rights only a herd
should live at the Boatcroft, yet he made no complaint nor asked any
question for conscience' sake, when he saw my mother with Maisie Lennox
at her elbow, or little Margaret of Glen Vernock moving about the little
steading.

In the evening it fell to me to make my first endeavours at waiting at
table, for though women were safe enough anywhere on the estate,
Balmaghie was not judged to be secure for me except within the house
itself.

So my mother gave me a great many cautions about how I should demean
myself, and how to be silent and mannerly when I handed the dishes.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE BLACK HORSE COMES TO BALMAGHIE.

As Wat and I went towards the great house in the early gloaming, we
became aware of a single horseman riding toward us and gaining on us
from behind. At the first sound of the trampling of his horse, Wat dived
at once over the turf dyke and vanished.

"Bide you!" he said. "He'll no ken you!"

A slender-like figure in a grey cavalry cloak and a plain hat without a
feather, came, slowly riding alongside of me, in an attitude of the
deepest thought.

I knew at a glance that it was John Graham of Claverhouse, whom all the
land of the South knew as "the Persecutor."

"Are you one of Balmaghie's servants?" he asked.

I took off my bonnet, showing as I did so my shaven poll, and answered
him that I was.

No other word he uttered, though he eyed me pretty closely and
uncomfortably, as if he had a shrewd thought that he had seen me before
elsewhere. But the shaven head and the absence of hair on my face were a
complete disguise.

For, indeed, though Maisie Lennox made little of it, the fact was tha