nce Maisie Lennox and I rode
home from the Tinklers' Loup; and my mother said always that she had
more trouble at the rearing of me than with all her cleckin'. By which
she meant, as one might say, her brood of chickens.

To me my father cried out as he rode out of the yard:

"Abide, William, and look to your mother--and see that the beasts get
their fodder, for you are the master of Earlstoun till I return."

"An' ye can help Jean to sew her bairn-clouts!" cried my brother Sandy,
whom we called the Bull, in that great voice of his which could cry from
Ardoch to Lochinvar over leagues of heather.

And I, who heard him with the water standing in my eyes because they
were going out in their war-gear while I had to bide at home,--could
have clouted him with a stone as he sat his horse, smiling and shaving
the back of his hand with his Andrea Ferrara to try its edge.

O well ken I that he was a great fighter and Covenant man, and did ten
times greater things than I, an ill-grown crowl, can ever lay my name
to. But nevertheless, such was the hatred I felt at the time towards
him, being my brother and thus flouting me.

But with us, as I have said, there abode our cousin Maisie Lennox from
the Duchrae, grown now into a douce and sonsy lass, with hair that was
like spun gold when the sun shone upon it. For the rest, her face rather
wanted colour, not having in it--by reason of her anxiety for her
father, and it may be also by the nature of her complexion--so much of
red as the faces of Jean Hamilton and other of our country lasses. But
because she was my comrade, I saw naught awanting, nor thought of red or
pale, since she was indeed Maisie Lennox and my friend and gossip of
these many years.

Also in some sort she had become a companion for my mother, for she had
a sedate and dependable way with her, solate and wise beyond her years.

"She is not like a flichty young body aboot a hoose," said my mother.

But in this I differed, yet said nothing. For no one could have been to
me what young Maisie of the Duchrae was.

After Sandy and my father had ridden away, and I that was left to keep
the house, went about with a hanging head because I had not ridden also,
Maisie Lennox grew more than ordinarily kind. Never had a feckless lad
like me, such a friend as Maisie of the Duchrae. It was far beyond that
love which the maids chatter about, and run out to the stackyard in the
gloaming to find--oft to their sorrow, poor sill