own on the
Duchrae. And from the door one can see the green fields and broomy
knowes where Maisie and I had played so long. But now the soldiers had
turned the steading out, the barn and byre were burned, and the stock
driven away.

So, unable to bear the desolation, Maisie and I sat out on the fair
green playing-croft that looks up to the hillside, and gazed sadly away
from one another, saying nothing. It began to be dark. I waited for her.

Suddenly she laid her head on my shoulder and began to sob very
bitterly.

"My faither! O my faither!" she said, labouring with her breath.

I said not a word, but only gently clapped and stroked her hand and arm.
For indeed I knew not what to say and the hand was near me.

"He saved me--he took me," she cried. "Then he gied himsel' for
another."

I thought she meant for the soldier laddie, but still I said nothing,
soothing her only.

It was coming now. I saw that she wanted to tell me all. So I said
nothing.

"It was in the gloaming, as it is now," she began, "and my sweet lass,
Margaret Wilson and I, had gone ower by to Tonskeen for some victual
that the kind guidwife hid every day in a hollow of the turf-dyke for
us. And as we came over the hilltop we heard the baying of hounds. But
we thought that it would be but the herd's dogs at a collie-shangie,
tearing at one another. So we came down the hill, stepping lightly as we
could with our load, when of a sudden there leapt on us three evil men.
Two of them took hold of me by the arms, and one gripped at Margaret.

"'Now take us to your faither, my bonny woman, or it will be the waur
for ye!' said the greatest in stature, a black-a-vised, ill-natured
rascal.

"But I was so astonished that I knew not what to say. The three were
manifestly no soldiers--that I could see at once--but just the scourings
of the Dumfries stables, that had taken to the informer's trade.

"Then when we came near, we saw that a great number of the crew had
dogs, and were drawing the rocks for my father, as though they had been
drawing a badger. And my heart leapt with anger to know that he was
their quarry."

But the mouth of the cave was too high among the rocks for even a dog to
get into at that time.

Indeed, there is something about it, whether the smell of the occupancy
of man or not, that makes dogs not keen to enter it even now.

And this was the matter of Maisie's tale. I give it simply as she told
it to me without "he-saids" or "