ie speaking of her sorrow, and my mother
comforting her. But when I listened, though indeed that was not my
custom, I perceived that it was my mother who grat and refused to be
comforted.

"O my William!" she cried, moaning like a child that would sob itself to
sleep, "I ken, O I ken, I shall never see him mair. He's lyin' cauld and
still at the dyke back that yince my airms keepit fast. O thae weary
Covenants, thae weary, weary Covenants!"

"Hush thee, my dawtie, say not so!" I heard the voice of my cousin
Maisie--I could not help but hear it, "The Lord calls us to do little
for Him oursels, for we are feckless women, an' what can we do? But He
bids us gie Him our men-folk, the desire o' our hearts. Brithers hae I
gie'n, twa and three, and my last is my father that lies noo amang the
moss-hags, as ye ken!"

But again I heard my mother's voice breaking through in a querulous
anger.

"What ken ye, lassie? Brithers and faither, guids and gear, they arena
muckle to loose. Ye never lost the man for wha's sake ye left faither
an' mither, only just to follow him through the warl'!"

And in the darkness I could hear my mother wail, and Maisie the young
lass hushing and clapping her. So, shamed and shaken at heart, I stole
away a-tiptoe lest any should hear me, for it was like a crime to listen
to what I had heard. But I am forgetting to tell of our riding away.

It was a morning so buoyant that we seemed verily up-borne by the flood
of sunlight, like the small birds that glided and sang in our Earlstoun
woods. Yet I had small time to think of the beauty of the summer tide,
when our father lay unburied at a dyke back, and some one must ride and
lay him reverently in the earth.

Sandy could not go--that was plain. He was now head of the house and
name. Besides the pursuit was hot upon him. So at my mother's word, I
took a pair of decent serving men and wended my way over the hill. And
as I went my heart was sore for my mother, who stood at the door to see
us go. She had supplied with her own hands all the decent wrappings
wherewith to bury my father. Sandy further judged it not prudent to
attempt to bring him home. He had gotten a staw of the red soldiers, he
said, and wished for that time to see no more of them.

But I that had seen none of them, was hot upon bringing my father to the
door to lie among his kin.

"The driving is like to be brisk enough without that!" said Sandy.

And my mother never said a word, for