ake off this badge of the bachelor; you have only been in a
monastery school, you know; you are my young brother--what shall we call
you?'

'Davie,' softly suggested Lilias.

'Ay, Davie then, that I've come home to fetch to share my Paris lear. You
can be very shy and bashful, you know, and leave all the knapping of
Latin and logic to me.'

'If it is such as you did with Jamie Kennedy,' said Lilias, 'it will
indeed be well. Oh, Malcolm, I sat and marvelled at ye--so gleg ye took
him up. How could ye learn it? And ye are a brave warrior too in
battles,' she added, looking him over with a sister's fond pride.

'We have had no battle, no pitched field,' said Malcolm 'but I have seen
war.'

'So that ugly words can never be flung in your face again!' cried Lilias.
'Are you knighted, brother?'

'No, but they say I have won my spurs. I'll tell you all, Lily, as we
walk. Only let me bestow this iron cap where some mavis may nestle in
it. Ay, and the boots too, which scarce befit a clerk. There, your
hand, Clerk Davie; we must make westward to-day, lest poor Duke Murdoch
be forced to send to chase us. After that, for the Border and Patie.'

So brother and sister set forth on their wandering--and truly it was a
happy journey. The weather favoured them, and their hearts were light.
Lilias, delivered from terrible, hopeless captivity, her brother beside
her, and now not a brother to be pitied and protected, but to protect her
and be exulted in, trod the heather with an exquisite sense of joy and
freedom that buoyed her up against all hardships; and Malcolm was at
peace, as he had seldom been. His happiness was not exactly like his
sister's in her renewed liberty and restoration to love and joy, for he
had known a wider range of life, and though really younger than Lily, his
more complicated history could not but make him older in thought and
mind. Another self-abnegation was beginning to rise upon him, as he
travelled slowly southwards by stages suited to his sister's powers, and
by another track than that by which he had gone. On the moor, or by the
burn side, there was peace and brightness; but wherever he met with man
he found something to sadden him. Did they rest in a monastery, there
was often irregularity, seldom devotion, always crass ignorance. The
manse was often a scene of such dissolute life that Malcolm shunned to
bring his sister into the sight of it; the peel tower was the dwelling of
savagery;