"Oh, Hamish, Hamish," said she, "I will have been doing that this
while."

CHAPTER XX.

"THE LOVE SECRET."

Lassies are droll creatures, and will tell many things the one to the
other in the way of a ploy, and Margaret McBride made great work with
old Betty's love potion, and that to Helen alone.

"I will be trying it on Hugh," said she, "when I have you sleeping, for
I will get scraping the white of your nail then."

And now this is the droll thing that came about. We had a day after
the otters at the Bennan, a wet cold day, with little that was
laughable in it, except that a man of the Macdonalds took an otter home
over his shoulders, and the beast dead, as we thought; but coming in at
his own door it gripped him by the back of his hip, and at the start he
got he let a great cry to his wife in the Gaelic.

"Fell the beast, fell the beast," and the wife, with a beetle in her
hand, and in a flurry of excitement to be felling the beast, came a
dour on her man's head that felled him, poor man, and we left them
then, the otter killed at last, and the man and wife demented with the
suddenness of the happenings, and came to the house of Scaurdale.

Now the lassies, Margaret and Helen, were in the mood for a ploy, and
Margaret it was who scraped the little white powder from Helen's
polished nail. "A wee tashte," she laughed, "old Betty would be
saying, 'chust a wee tashte.'" And when the boys came in red-faced and
with sparkling eyes (for I was watching the prank), "Now," said
Margaret, "I will be giving poor Hugh his dram, and then everything
will do finely."

"But," said Helen, "I will be my own cup-bearer, or maybe the charm
will be a useless thing." And she took the old glass--a rummer it
was--and she carried it very daintily to the boys and bowed.

"Here is refreshment, my tired hunter," said she, and gave the glass
into Bryde's hand, and that swarthy hillman raised the glass to the
cup-bearer and drained it.

"I will not be very clever, it seems, Hamish," said Margaret.

But I had admiration for Helen, for she came back, laughing very
softly. "Now we shall prove your charm, Mistress Margaret," said she;
"for truly M'sieu Hugh did not require it, but Bryde--he is cold and
hard like his own hills with me."

And that very night it was as though old Betty's havers were potent
spells, for Bryde was the fair-haired laddie with the Laird of
Scaurdale always, and as the evening wore on he grew a lit