hatever it had been.
It now came to my mind that I had not seen Alec since the day before,
when I sent him out to play with the minister's son, till Maister
Marchbanks had peace to give us his crack before I went out to the hill
sheep.

So I mentioned to Mrs. M'Quhirr that I had a letter from the minister
about the boy. "Let us hear it," says she. So I read the letter word for
word.

"What does he mean by a' that screed?" she asked. "It's like a bit o' a
sermon."

Now, my wife takes the general good out of a sermon, but she does not
always trouble to translate pulpit language into plain talk.

"He means that there's six o' yin an' half a dizzen o' the ither," I
explained, to smooth her down.

"Na, they're no' that," said Mrs. M'Quhirr; "my laddie may be steerin',
I'm no' denyin'; but he's no' to be named in the same day as that
misleered hound, the minister's loon!"

It was evidently more than ever necessary to proceed with
circumspection.

"At any rate, let us hear what the laddie has to say for himsel'. Where
is he?" I said.

"He's in the barn," said his mother shortly.

To the barn I went. It is an old building with two doors, one very
large, of which the upper half opens inwards; and the other gives a
cheery look into the orchard when the sugar-plums are ripening. One end
was empty, waiting for the harvest, now just changing into yellow, and
the other had been filled with meadow hay only the week before.

"Alec!" I cried, as I came to the door.

There was an answer like the squeaking of a rat among the hay, and I
thought, "Bless me, the boy's smothered!" But then again I minded that
in his times of distress, after a fight or when he had been in some ploy
for which he dared not face his father, Alec had made himself a cave
among the hay or corn in the end of the barn. Like all Lowland barns,
ours has got a row of three-cornered unglazed windows, called "wickets."
Through one of these I have more than once seen Alec vanish when hard
pressed by his mother, and have been amused even under the sober face of
parental discipline. For, once through, no one could follow the boy.
There was no one about the farm slender enough to scramble after. I had
not the smallest doubt that the scapegrace was now lying snugly in his
hole, impregnable behind the great hay-mow, provisioned with a few farls
of cake from his mother, and with his well-beloved _Robinson Crusoe_ for
sole companion of the solitary hours.

I went