s cold meat. Your poor
dear grandfather--ah! he was a man."

"So am I. And I have got half a guinea. Now, Drum, you do just what I
tell you; and mind, not a word to any one. It will be the last coin you
ever see of mine, either now or in all my life, remember, if you let
my mamma ever hear of it. You slip down to the larder and get me a cold
grouse, and a cold partridge, and two of the hearth-stone cakes, and
a pat of butter, and a pinch of salt, and put them in my army knapsack
Aunt Philippa gave me; also a knife and fork and plate; and--let me
see--what had I better have to drink?"

"Well, Sir, if I might offer an opinion, a pint bottle of dry port, or
your grandfather's Madeira."

"Young ladies--young gentlemen I mean, of course--never take strong
wines in the middle of the day. Bucellas, Drum--Bucellas is the proper
thing. And when you have got it all together, turn the old cat into the
larder, and get away cleverly by your little door, and put my knapsack
in the old oak-tree, the one that was struck by lightning. Now do you
understand all about it? It must all be ready in half an hour. And if
I make a good dinner out on the moor, why, you might get another half
guinea before long." And with these words away strode Pet.

"Well, well," the butler began muttering to himself; "what wickedness
are you up to next? A lassie in his head, and his dear mammy thought
he was sickening over his wisdom-teeth! He is beginning airly, and no
mistake. But the gals are a coarse ugly lot about here"--Master Welldrum
was not a Yorkshireman--"and the lad hath good taste in the matter of
wine; although he is that contrairy, Solomon's self could not be upsides
with him. Fall fair, fall foul, I must humor the boy, or out of this
place I go, neck and crop."

Accordingly, Pet found all that he had ordered, and several little
things which he had not thought of, especially a corkscrew and a glass;
and forgetting half his laziness, he set off briskly, keeping through
the trees where no window could espy him, and down a little side glen,
all afoot; for it seemed to him safer to forego his pony.

The gill (or "ghyll," as the poet writes it), from which the lonely
family that dwelt there took their name, was not upon the bridle-road
from Scargate Hall toward Middleton, nor even within eye or reach of
any road at all; but overlooked by kites alone, and tracked with
thoroughfare of nothing but the mountain streamlet. The four who lived
there-