ng to beckon all the
world to its aid.

And Belle the gipsy lass lifted the child and wrapped her in the shawl,
and took the road in front of us. I had mind of Belle when she was the
bonniest lass among a wheen of black-avised Eastern folk, that camped
for many's the year on the ground of Scaurdale, where my uncle's
friend, John o' Scaurdale, farmed land; but I was not prepared for her
strange powers on horse, or for the beauty of her, and I think Dan was
of my way of thinking also, for at the stable door says he: "I think,
Hamish, a fee from John o' Scaurdale would not be such a bad thing with
a lass like Belle to be seeing in the gloaming."

[1] Ires--"flags."

[2] Costly apparel.

CHAPTER II.

MAKES SOME MENTION OF ONE JOCK McGILP, AND TELLS HOW BELLE BROUGHT
THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL INTO THE HOUSE OF NOURN.

Nourn was home to me in my holidays and vacations from the college, and
here I was back again for good, having become Magister Artium and well
acquainted with the plane-stanes and glaber of the town of
Glasgow--back again to the green countryside on my uncle's land of
Nourn, concerned more about horses and cattle beasts than with the
Arts, and with enough siller left me by my parents to be able to follow
my inclinations.

My uncle--the Laird of Nourn, as he was called--had married kind of
late, a common habit where the years bring strength and not eld; and
Dan, his brother Ewan the soldier's son, had been at Nourn since he
could creep, being early left an orphan.

On the Sunday after the coming of Belle the gipsy I lay long abed. In
those days my cousin Dan and I made a practice of sleeping above the
horses, "to be near them," as Dan said; but for myself I aye thought it
would be that he might the easier slip out at night, and in again in
the morning, and nobody the wiser.

In the years I would be at the college Dan had become airt and pairt of
every wildness in the countryside, and in these times every man with
red blood in him was concerned with the smuggling or the distilling of
whisky,--and that is the reason that mothers were wishful that their
sons should be able to "take a horse by the head and a boat by the
helm," for these would be very needful attributes in a handy lad.

And lying there in bed I minded how I once fell in with Jock McGilp,
the captain of the smuggler _Seagull_, a man that sailed the _Gull_
like a witch, and cracked his fingers at the Revenue cutters, and this