, and tell what he wished the family to be doing next.
This way it might have kept going on for forty years, only it came
about that my grandfather's youngest child--him that was my
father--fell sick, and seemed like to die.

"Well, when my grandfather heard that bad news, he wass in a terrible
way, to be sure, for he would be longing to hold the child in his
arms, so that his heart was sore and like to break. Eat he could not,
sleep he could not: all night he would be groaning, and all day he
would be walking around by the posts, wishing that he had not passed
his Hielan' word of honor not to go beyond a post; for he thought how
he could have broken out like a chentleman, and gone to see his sick
child, if he had stayed inside the jail wall. So it went on three days
and three nights pefore the wise thought came into my grandfather's
head to show him how he need not go beyond the posts to see his little
sick poy. With that he went straight to one of the white cedar posts,
and pulled it up out of the hole, and started for home, taking great
care to carry it in his hands pefore him, so he would not be beyond it
one bit.

"My grandfather wass not half a mile out of Cornwall, which was only a
little place in those days, when two of the turnkeys came after him.

"'Stop, Mr. McTavish,' says the turnkeys.

"'What for would I stop?' says my grandfather.

"'You have broke your bail,' says they.

"'It's a lie for you,' says my grandfather, for his temper flared up
for anybody to say he would broke his bail. 'Am I beyond the post?'
says my grandfather.

"With that they run in on him, only that he knocked the two of them
over with the post, and went on rejoicing, like an honest man should,
at keeping his word and overcoming them that would slander his good
name. The only thing pesides thoughts of the child that troubled him
was questioning whether he had been strictly right in turning round
for to use the post to defend himself in such a way that it was nearer
the jail than what he wass. But when he remembered how the jailer
never complained of prisoners of the limits chumping ofer the posts,
if so they chumped back again in a moment, the trouble went out of his
mind.

"Pretty soon after that he met Tuncan Macdonnell of Greenfields,
coming into Cornwall with the wagon.

"'And how is this, Glengatchie?' says Tuncan. 'For you were never the
man to broke your bail.'

"Glengatchie, you'll understand, sir, is the name of my