stopped
to fill it from the clear, sparkling water of the burn. It was
such a wonderful bright spring morning that, having filled it,
she stopped for a moment to look about her at the dear familiar
surroundings of her home.

There was the little gray house itself, with the peat smoke
curling from the chimney straight up into the blue sky. Back of
it was the garden-patch with its low stone wall, and back of that
were the fowl-yard and the straw-covered byre for the cow.
Beyond, and to the north lay the moors, covered with heather and
dotted with grazing sheep. Jean could hear the tinkle of their
bells, the bleating of the lambs, and the comforting maternal
answers of the ewes. Above the dark forest which spread itself
over the slopes of the foot-hills toward the south and east a
lave rock was singing, and she could hear the cry of whaups
wheeling and circling over the moors. They were pleasant morning
sounds, dear and familiar to Jean's ear, and oh, the sparkle of
the dew on the bracken, and the smell of the hawthorn by the
garden wall! Jean lifted her pail of water and went singing with
it up the hill-slope to the house for sheer joy that she was
alive.

"The Campbells are coming, O ho, O ho!" she sang, and the hills,
taking up the refrain, echoed "O ho, O ho!"

True Tammas, who had slept all night under the straw-stack by the
byre, came bounding down the little path to meet her, wagging his
tail and barking his morning greeting. They reached the door
together, but Jock, mindful of his injuries, had shut and barred
it, and was grinning at them through the window. Jean sat placidly
down upon the step with True Tammas beside her and continued her
song. Her calmness irritated Jock.

"Aye," he shouted through the crack, "the Campbells may be
coming, but they'll not get in this house! You can just sit there
blethering all day, and I'll never unbar the door."

Jean stopped singing long enough to answer: "You'll get no
breakfast, then, you mind, unless you'll be getting it yourself,
for the porridge is not cooked and the kettle's nearly boiled
away. I've the water-pail with me, and there's not a drop else in
the house."

She left him to consider this and resumed her song. For several
minutes she and True Tammas sat there gazing westward across the
valley with the little river flowing through it, to the hills
swimming in the blue distance beyond.

At last she called over her shoulder, "Jock, Father's coming,"
and