, for was she not
like a wild thing chained, but more like a sister to Bryde than a
mother.

And old Betty, Betty of eighty winters, sat by the fireside and would
look at Bryde with her old, old eyes, hardly seeing, and whiles she
would be calling the boy "Young Dan," and whiles havering of Miss
Janet, his grandmother.

"You will be clever, clever," she would be saying to Belle, "and you
will get another man yet. . . ."

And one night as I stood at the door--a clear night, I mind, with a
harvest moon--"Hamish," said Belle, and her hand was at her heart, "I
could go to him barefoot, for is he not always with me in the night?"

As I sat dreaming and listening in a kind of a way to the talk round
me, it came on me that Margaret kept near to her mother, and once only
did I see her look at Bryde, a hurried puzzled look,--but Hugh was
ardent already, his face flushed and his laugh merry, and Mistress
Helen was happy too.

There was the great struggling with our language, and she had a droll
taking way of it that Hugh would be correcting in his college manner;
but Bryde sat back, listening mostly, his face proud and swarthy in the
shadows, and sometimes smiling to Mistress Helen, for her eyes would
come back to him often.

When the moon was up, Bryde rose.

"With your leave," said he, "I will be on the road."

Margaret came over beside me and put her hand into mine.

"You're early, sir, you're early," cried Scaurdale; "it's asourying wi'
the lasses ye will be at."

The mistress looked not so ill-pleased at that, but it seemed to me
Margaret's hand tightened in mine with a little tremble.

"I'm thinking, Scaurdale, we will be getting a pair of colours for
Bryde," said my uncle. "Would he not make a slashing light dragoon?"

At that Mistress Helen clapped her hands. "I think yes," said she,
"but yes, certainly."

"I would be going to the sea," said Bryde, "like Angus McKinnon--the
tall ships and the strange countries, the white sails in the moonlight,
and the black cannon and the cutlasses," said he, and then with a sort
of shame, "and all that," but his eyes were full of longing and his
cheek flushed.

"Ah oui," cried Helen, "I am seeing all that, M'sieu."

And Hugh McBride looked glumly at Bryde as he left.

"I am forgetting," said Margaret, "I am wanting Bryde. Take me,
Hamish," and her hand was pressing mine. But I thought to be teaching
her a lesson, and sat still a little.

"What is it you will h