FIRST MEETING
XIX. THE RIDERS ON THE MOOR
XX. "THE LOVE SECRET"
XXI. DOL BEAG LAUGHS
XXII. THE SHAMELESS LASS
XXIII. HELEN AND BRYDE McBRIDE REST AT THE FOOT OF THE URIE
XXIV. THE HALFLIN'S MESSAGE
XXV. I RIDE AGAIN TO McALLAN'S LOCKER
XXVI. A WEDDING ON THE DOORSTEP
XXVII. MARGARET McBRIDE KISSES HELEN
XXVIII. IN WHICH BETTY COMPLAINS OF GROWING-PAINS
XXIX. THE RAKING BLACK SCHOONER
XXX. TELLS WHERE BRYDE MET HAMISH OG
XXXI. BRYDE AND MARGARET
XXXII. BRYDE AND HELEN
XXXIII. HOW JOHN McCOOK HEARS OF THE PLOY AT THE CLATES
XXXIV. WHAT CAME OF THE PLOY
XXXV. DOL BEAG LAUGHS AGAIN

THE McBRIDES.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

WHICH TELLS OF THE COMING OF THE GIPSY.

It was April among the hills, waes me, the far-away days of my youth,
when the hills were smiling through the mists of their tears, and the
green grasses thrusting themselves through the withered mat of the
pasture like slender fairy swords. April in the hills, with the
curlews crying far out on the moorside, past the Red Ground my
grandfather wrought, and where again the heather will creep down, rig
on rig, for all the stone dykes, deer fences, and tile drains that ever
a man put money in. I never knew why it was they called it "Red
Ground," for it was mostly black peaty soil, but my grandfather would
be saying, "It will be growing corn. Give it wrack, and it will be
growing corn for evermore."

They tell me he was a great farmer for all he was laird, and never
happier than at his own plough tail, breaking a colt to work in chains;
and he it was who improved the stock in cattle and horse in our glens,
for he would be aye telling the young farmers, "Gie the quey calves
plenty o' milk, as much as they'll lash into themselves. Be good to
them when the baby flesh is on them, and they'll grow and thrive, and
your siller'll a' come back in the milking."

The countryside clavered and havered when he bought his pedigree bulls
and his pedigree mares. "It's money clean wasted," said the old
farmers, "for a calf's a calf no odds what begets it, and a horse that
can work in chains and take its turn on the road is horse enough for
any man, without sinking money in dumb beasts, and a' this sire-and-dam
pother." It would anger the old man that talk, ay, even when he was
the old frail frame of what once he was,--like a dead and withered
ash-tree, dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to