asing us, I
sat down to a meal in Finlay's kitchen, and when I rose on my legs to
be going, my lass flung a shawl round her, and wondrous bonny she was
in that shawl, and we left by the back road to be seeing my mother, and
the lassies flung bachles at us 'for luck.' And although Mirren was
not out o' my sight in the house, yet I will be quite sure they kent we
were for the marrying, for I got a glimpse o' Peggy, a rollicking
tomboy o' a lass, rubbing herself against Mirren's shawl and crying,
'It's me that will be going off next.'

"And Anne, a ruddy lass, whispered--

"'Now that you will have the lad you were speaking about through your
sleep, Mirren, maybe ye'll be giving me your garters,' and between one
and the other o' them, it was a red-faced, brave-looking lass that
stood wi' me in my mother's kitchen.

"And my mother, that I had been wearying for a sight o' for three years
past, my old mother, kissed the lass first, and then--

"'You will have managed to bring him to his senses at last, Mirren
dear,' said she; and then I found that these two had been having the
great confabs when I would be away, and my wife has told me since, when
she was new-fangled wi' me, and very loving, that she would just be
going there to be listening to my mother's stories about me, when I
would be a wean; and although I will be telling her that the things I
am remembering most are the skelpings I would be getting, she just will
be laughing at me.

"'It is not one half of what you would be deserving, my man,' she says.

"So and on, there we sat wi' the red glow of the fire shining on my old
mother's face, making her look hearty and well in her white mutch, and
glinting on Mirren's eyes when she turned to speak, and lowing in the
copper o' her hair, and I would be content to sit and listen to these
two, till Mirren had to be going. On the road home she made no
complaints when I put my arm round her, for was she not my own lass
now. Moreover, it was dark. We were at our first good-night under the
rowan-trees beside the byre, for rowans will keep the fairies away, and
it is good farming to have them where the beasts will be walking under
them every day. We were loath to part, Mirren and me, and she would be
lying against my breast, when there came the figure of a man running,
and I kent him for Gilchrist the excise-man.

"'Stop a wee, my lad; stop,' says I. 'What will be hurrying ye?'

"'That damned McGilp has escaped us ag