am thinking I was the only one
that would be getting the meaning of that saying.

"But why did you not return--many years?" said Helen.

"Just precisely that I would never be the one to see one o' my name
dangling at the end o' a cart tether," said Dan, "or jingling at a
cross-roads on a wuddy. Many a night I would be at this place," says
he, with a smile to his wife, "but there was no word for me, and the
years came and went, and there would be fighting to be going on
with--och, it was a weary waiting when there was no little war
somewhere, but it's by wi' now, the great thing is that it's by
with. . . ."

Hugh and Mistress Helen went their own road, and we watched them from
the doorstep, and Dan himself put the saddle gear on Margaret's little
horse, and walked a bit of the way with us on the home road.

"I am liking that man too," said Margaret, when we were alone, "but I
am thinking there was a liking for the wandering, and the fighting in
him, or else he had been back long syne."

"He would have his happy days these twenty years," said she, "in new
towns and among new folk, and Belle kind of chained to the moor
here--it is that silent woman I will be liking the best of all, Hamish."

"My dear," said I, "you are not understanding the pride of your ain
folk. Yon was the God's truth and nothing else he told Mistress Helen;
the hangman's rope is no decent to be coiled about a man's folk. It's
just the cleverness of Helen Stockdale I will be made up with--the
simple sending of a screed of news; what beats me is why she did it."

"And that's easy to me," says Margaret. "It would just be a gift to
Belle, Hamish."

"To Belle," says I.

"There are maybe more ways o' killing a cat than choking it with
butter," said the lass, "but that will be a very effective way, and
even the cat might like it, I am thinking. Ye'll mind, Hamish, that
Belle is the mother o' Bryde McBride, and what could not but be
pleasing to the mother, would be like enough to please the lad, that
doted on her a' his days."

"I think I am seeing it," said I.

"Ay, but Helen never would be seeing it like that, Hamish. She saw it
like a flash, and sent the letter that brought back Dan, and I am not
sure but Bryde would be here yet, if the mail had but come to hand
sooner."

"Margaret," said I, "are there none among the young sparks coming about
the place that you could be tholing about ye?"

"No," says she, with a smile; "there is a wor