where it meets the clear Ken, that Maisie May and I played many
a morning at Wanderers and King's men. I mind it as it were yesterday,
for the dales and holms were pranked out with white hawthorn and broad
gowans, and by our woodland hiding-places little frail wildflowers grew,
nodding at us as we lay and held our breath.

Now Maisie Lennox (for that was her proper given name) was my cousin,
and had been gossip of mine ever since we came to the age of five years;
Sandy, my elder brother, making nothing of me because I was so much
younger and he ever hot upon his own desires. Neither, if the truth must
be told, did I wear great love upon him at any time. When we fell out,
as we did often, he would pursue after me and beat me; but mostly I
clodded him with pebble stones, whereat I had the advantage, being ever
straight of eye and sure of aim. Whereas Sandy was gleyed[1] and threw
stones like a girl, for all the stoutness of his arm.

[Footnote 1: Could not see straight.]

But that is not to say like Maisie Lennox, who was Anthony Lennox's
daughter, and could throw stones with any one. She lived at the Lesser
Duchrae above the Black Water. As for me I lived at Earlstoun on the
hillside above the Ken, which is a far step from the Duchrae. But our
fathers were of the one way of thinking, and being cousins by some
former alliance and friends of an ancient kindliness, it so happened, as
I say, that Maisie Lennox and I played much together. Also my mother had
great tenderness of heart for the bit lass that had no mother, and a
father as often on the moors with the wildfowl, as at home with his one
little maid.

For the times were very evil. How evil and contrary they were, we that
had been born since 1660 and knew nothing else, could but dimly
understand. For though fear and unrest abode in our homes as constant
indwellers, with the fear of the troopers and plunderers, yet because it
had always been so, it seemed not very hard to us. Indeed we bairns of
these years played at Covenanting, as it had been the game of "Scots and
English" on the hillside, even from the time when we first began to run
alone.

Well do I mind that day when I pleaded and fleeched on my father to take
me before him on Gay Garland, as he rode to the Duchrae. It was a brisk
May day with an air vigorous as a draught of wine, yet cool, clear, and
sweet as spring water is--a pearl of a day, such as hardly seems to come
in these sullen later years.

So