reset your trap without so much as a single
spiteful keeper being a bit the wiser; and now, taking a fancy to look
at her window, ye've seen the little blossom hersel. But she's a neat
little flower, and when she's done greeting after that dirty loon of a
butler, she'll come round. He was a bad one--a bad one, and as jealous
as a Moor; but he's out of the way now, and Jeanie, my sousie lassie,
ye'll be mine one of these days, I think."

Alexander McCray stepped gingerly along amongst the bushes, holding the
rabbit he had caught tightly in one pocket of his velveteens, secure in
his own mind from interruption, for even if he had now met a keeper he
was upon his own domain--the garden; and zeal for the protection of his
master's fruit would have been his excuse. So he stepped softly along,
pushing the shrubs aside, and turning once to look at Jane's window, and
during those few moments, as he stood there, looking very solemn, and
relieving his feelings by kissing his hand a few times to the darkened
window, Sandy McCray was in imminent danger of having his brains knocked
out. If he had gone a foot more to the right, or a yard more to the
left, the result would have been a fierce struggle; but as it happened,
Sandy did neither, but strode safely, straight along, and made his way
to his cottage, where he regaled himself with half-a-dozen pinches of
snuff, and then turned in, to dream of the fair face of Jane.

Book 1, Chapter XXII.

JANE'S LOVERS--NUMBER 1.

But Sandy McCray was no sluggard: the little Dutch clock in his room was
only striking five, and the dew was bright upon the grass, as he stepped
out, crossed the bit of park between his cottage and the garden, and
then, taking a rake in his hand, walked towards the shrubbery where he
had stood for a few minutes the night before. For Sandy argued that,
with all his care, he might have left some footprints about, and that
footprints beneath the window of the lady of his love were things not to
be thought of for a moment, since they were not tolerated elsewhere.

"Just as I thought," muttered the Scot; and his rake erased a deep
footmark and then another upon the border, when, as he half-smoothed
over a third, he stopped short, and, lifting his cap with one hand, he
let the rake-handle fall into the hollow of his arm, so that he might
indulge in a good scratch at his rough, red head.

The scratching seemed to do no good, so he refreshed his intellect with
a pi