it went to my
heart when I saw she was making the wheaten cakes raised with sour
buttermilk that were my father's favourites.

She had not been at it long before in came Jock o' the Garpel, hot-foot
from the hill.

"Maister Alexander!" he cried, panting and broken-winded with haste,
"Maister Alexander is comin' ower the Brae!"

There was silence in the wide kitchen for a moment, only the sound of my
mother's roller being heard, "dunt-dunting" on the dough.

"Is he by his lane?" asked my mother without raising her head from the
bake-board.

"Ay," said Jock o' the Garpel, "a' by his lane. No a man rides ahint
him."

And again there was silence in the wide house of Earlstoun.

My mother went to the girdle to turn the wheaten cakes that were my
father's favourites, and as she bent over the fire, there was a sound as
if rain-drops were falling and birsling upon the hot girdle. But it was
only the water running down my mother's cheeks for the love of her
youth, because now her last hope was fairly gone.

Then in the middle of her turning she drew the girdle off the fire, not
hastily, but with care and composedness.

"I'll bake nae mair," she cried, "Sandy has come ower the hill his
lane!"

And I caught my mother in my arms.

CHAPTER V.

THE CLASH OF WORDS.

A doubtful dawn had grown into a chosen day when I saddled in Earlstoun
courtyard, to ride past the house of our kinswoman at Lochinvar on a sad
and heavy errand. Sandy has betaken himself to his great oak on the
border of the policies, where with his skill in forest craft he had
built himself a platform among the solidest masses of the leaves. There
he abode during the day, with a watch set on the Tod Hill and another on
the White Hill above the wood of Barskeoch. Only at the even, when all
things were quiet, would he venture to slip down and mix with us about
the fire. But he swung himself swiftly back again to his tree by a rope,
if any of the dragoons were to be heard of in the neighbourhood.

During all this time it comes back to me how much we grew to depend on
Maisie Lennox. From being but "Anton Lennox's dochter" she came to be
"Meysie, lass" to my mother, and indeed almost a daughter to her. Once,
going to the chamber-door at night to cry ben some message to my mother,
I was startled and afraid to hear the sound of sobbing within--as of one
crying like a young lass or a bairn, exceedingly painful to hear. I
thought that it had been Mais