and a just man. I'll wager ye, he
did not hang long in irons. The thing was done circumspectly, mind
you--nae high-handedness--but Belle's folk were about Glen Scaur, a
droll wandering band, claiming great descent from Eastern folk, and
with horses and dogs and spaewife among them; and Belle (as they will
be calling her) was the daughter o' the Chief, a very proud man.

"They were a wandering tribe, Mr Hamish, and they wandered into the
south country, and I'm thinking ye saw the bonny spaewife coming back
her lane, except for a wean, on a morning ye ploughed stubble.

"But here's the droll bit," says he. "Stockdale was kilt an his horse,
too, in his ain park, for he scoured the place like a madman after the
wean was lost. Weel, weel, that finished the lady, poor body. Ye'll
see how things are now, Mr Hamish," says he.

"Yon's an heiress. An' that's a' I'll be saying," says he, for
McKinnon came in from his stable, "but the Laird, your uncle, was in
the ploy," says he, "or I'm sair mistaken, and the Mistress too."

With that we rose to be going, and had a glass, and the captain's last
words were--"Ye'll mind yon: 'I'm not wanting the wean to grow up like
a cadger's dog.'"

As I was walking home that night the thought came into my head of the
wisdom of Betty at the big house.

I minded her saying to me on the Sunday that Belle took the wean in the
tartan shawl to the Mistress--her very words came back to me--

"The wean has the look o' John o' Scaurdale."

PART II.

CHAPTER XVII.

I TURN SCHOOLMASTER.

There were many things to be doing in these days--peats to be cutting
and carted home and built into tidy stacks, just as you can see them
to-day, and the sprits and bog hay to be saving, for we were not good
at growing hay, and then, when the boys grew up, there was the
schooling of them. It was the boys we would aye be calling them, Dan's
boy and the Laird's son, and they were fine boys.

Bryde McBride, that was the name of Dan's son, and Hugh, with a wheen
other names, was the young Laird, who was schooled in Edinburgh and was
not long back to us, and there was a lass Margaret, his sister. They
would be with me everywhere on the long summer days, and me with the
books by me; but mostly in the summer we would hold school at the Wee
Hill, for there was a green place as level as the page of a book, and a
little turf dyke enclosing it nearly, that we called the Wee Hill.
Wae's me, now they have