h her slow smile, "I
will know--another way."

"In what way?" says Margaret, throwing the last of the grain to the
fowls about her feet.

"Something will _leap up_ here, ma belle, where my heart is."

And for some reason Margaret, the Flower of Nourn, dropped her grain
dish and kissed her guest.

Now there is little to be telling when little things only are in the
memory, and yet the days with little to be remembering are the happy
days, that go past quickly like youth, and leave but vague memories of
sunshine and laughter--of nights, and song, and dance. And there were
great nights of happiness, for in these days the folk had the time to
be knowing one the other, and neighbourly. And maybe in an evening
there would be gathered at Dan's place all the old friends of his
youth. You would be seeing Ronald McKinnon and Mirren, sitting in the
circle round the fire, thrang at the knitting--both man and
wife--kemping as they called it: that is, each would tie a knot in the
worsted and make a race of it, who would be finished first. And Jock
McGilp too would be there, standing off and on, between the stories of
his wild seafaring days and the ghost stories of his youth; and Robin
McKelvie and his sister that met us on the shore head of the isle that
night the Red Laird passed; and there was no Red Roland in her mind
these days, for she had weans to her oxter. And maybe, perched on a
table like a heathen god, the tailor would be working; and if there
were young lassies with their lads, ye would have the fiddle going, and
the hoochin' and the dancing.

And even in the cottars' houses the good-wife would have a meal on such
a night, and it would be pork and greens, or herring and potatoes; and
then when it was bedtime in the morning, the ceilidhers would take the
road, with maybe a piper at the head of them, and it would be at
another house they would be meeting on the next night. Wae's me, these
days are fast going, and there are bolts and bars on the doors now.
The story of a winter's ceilidhing would be a great book for fine
stories.

And into a meeting of this kind, when the evening was well on, came
Hugh McBride, and there was the great scraping of chairs and stools
back from the fire, and Belle would have been putting a fire in a
better room; but Dan had been too long in the field for these capers,
for all that Hugh would be Laird and very grand above common folk. Dan
waved him to a chair in his polite way, an