s nothing," retorted May Girmory, "for where I was on the Beltane
eve, there in that very place ye were yourself--you and my brither Jo.
It is like that ye would keep _that_ secret? But this is different."

"I will keep it, 'by the hand and fut of Mary,'" said Lizzie McCreath,
quite forgetting that she was the daughter of the Grand Master of an
Orange Lodge.

"Well, then," said May, "there is a Princess riding about the country,
here and there and away. She has all Stair Garland's band ready, and
hundreds more, too--aye, thousands if need be, pledged to rescue the
lads laid up there. Jo is in it."

"Oh," said Liz McCreath, with a curious alteration of tone, "Jo is in
it, is he? And he never said a word to me."

"Neither did he to me, but somebody else telled me--"

"Sandy O'Neil, it would be, maybe then, like as not!"

"And what for no?" demanded the revealer of secrets, and so proceeded
unblushingly with her tale. She skipped some parts, to which she had
been sworn to particular secrecy. But Miss Liz McCreath, while noting
these, let the blanks pass, comfortably sure in her mind that so soon as
she got Jo Girmory by himself, she knew a way of making him tell her all
about it--the same, indeed, as that by which May Girmory had brought
Sandy O'Neil to full auricular confession.

"But what like is your Princess? Does she wear a goold crown now?" said
the Irish girl.

"Not her," said May Girmory, "she has a riding skirt, the way folk has
them made in London, and gangs by at a hand-gallop, a different powny
every time, and Lord, she doesna spare them!"

"That," said Liz McCreath with cold contempt, "is no Princess at all.
'Tis only little Patsy Ferris from Cairn Ferris, and I saw her faither
yesterday at the Apothecaries' Hall at the Vennel Head!"

"And what wad he be wantin' there, now?"

"He asked for 'something soothin'' and he appeared most terribly glad to
get it. He did be takin' a good drink on the spot."

"Puir man, I am sure he had need o't. He will maybe no be so very
anxious aboot this lad Garland as his dochter!"

"So I was thinking, but what garred ye be whistling in my lug that she
was a Princess? A laird's lass is no a Princess, that ever I heard of
over yonder!"

"There's a heap of things ye have not heard 'over yonder,' and this may
be one of them. But Patsy Ferris is a Princess because she could be a
Princess the very minute she made up her mind to marry a Prince that has
been askin' her a