"She did not mean any harm," she said afterwards, when the miller took
her to task for it; but although she might not mean to do any harm, she
did plenty, as senseless folk are apt to do when they cannot bear to
take other people's advice, for she took a pair of her husband's old,
mouldy, worn-out breeches, and laid them down one night beside the
cogful of brose.

By my faith, if the village folk had not remembered so well what
Aiken-Drum had said about wanting no wages, they would have found
something better to give him than a pair of worn-out breeks.

Be that as it may, the long and the short of it was, that the dear wee
man's feelings were hurt because we would not take his services for
nothing, and he vanished in the night, as Brownies are apt to do, so
Grannie Duncan says, if anyone tries to pay them, and we have never seen
him from that day to this, although the bairns declare that they
sometimes hear him singing down by the mill, as they pass it in the
gloaming, on their way home from school.

SIR PATRICK SPENS

"The king sits in Dunfermline town,
Drinking the blude-red wine;
'O whare will I get a skeely skipper,
To sail this new ship o' mine?'

* * * * *

Half owre, half owre to Aberdour,
'Tis fifty fathoms deep,
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet."

Now hearken to me, all ye who love old stories, and I will tell you how
one of the bravest and most gallant of Scottish seamen came by his
death.

'Tis the story of an event which brought mourning and dule to many a
fair lady's heart, in the far-off days of long ago.

Now all the world knows that his Majesty, King Alexander the Third, who
afterwards came by his death on the rocks at Kinghorn, had one only
daughter, named Margaret, after her ancestress, the wife of Malcolm
Canmore, whose life was so holy, and her example so blessed, that, to
this day, men call her Saint Margaret of Scotland.

King Alexander had had much trouble in his life, for he had already
buried his wife, and his youngest son David, and 'twas no wonder that,
as he sat in the great hall of his Palace at Dunfermline, close to the
Abbey Church, where he loved best to hold his Court, that his heart was
sore at the thought of parting with his motherless daughter.

She had lately been betrothed to Eric, the young King of Norway, and it
was now full time that she went to her n