e too; but I'll aye be mindin' ye
coorieing ower me, and greetin' for a' that, when the men o' the
_Seagull_ were feart tae venture into the stall, being sailors and
strange wi' horse."

Among the hay there I remembered the loud voices and the slamming of
doors in the night, and Jock McGilp and his message about the "turf
being in"; and here it was coming round that these two had met then,
and I somehow had helped to bring them together.

"I will be asking you to do me a service the night," I heard the girl
say.

"I'm thinkin' that, my dear, will it be ridin' for the priest, for
indeed you're such a _wicked_ lass I see nae ither way for it. I canna
aye be knockin' when your wickedness keeps me in the caul' . . . ."

"Come," she cried, rising, "come, for we will have been dallying too
long, and I did give my word to Scaurdale. I will not be listening any
more to your talk."

"Where fell ye across that grizzly dog, John, Laird o' Scaurdale?" said
Dan as they rose.

* * * * * *

So I waited until the hay was all quiet and the lovers gone, and I got
the dogs and went after the deer.

Outside the dyke I found them herded, their sentinels posted like an
army resting, and away they headed, the collies at their heels, and me
racing through bracken and heather and burn, after seeing them clearing
a rise and disappearing, the big antlers like branching trees. Away
and away I followed, till the dogs' barking was faint in the night and
the three lonely hills were looming before me, and I saw the wild-fire
glimmer on the peat-bogs and the moon going down as I whistled and
whistled for the dogs.

And as I waited I heard the thud, thud, thud of horses galloping, and
then the jangle of bridle-chains, and I lay down in the heather. Two
horsemen passed me, wrapped in their riding-cloaks, and after a while a
light jumped out on the hillside, and I knew the horsemen had stopped
at the old empty shepherd's house, and I made my way there, for since
old McCurdy died the house had been empty. I could hear the dogs
barking away among the hills, and the rustle of the night-folks among
the dry heather as I cautiously rounded the "but and ben," and there at
the door were the two horses that had passed me. Quietly I crawled
into a clump of heather and lay a-watching, and turned in my mind
everything I might be a witness to, and found no answer. Then, away
behind me, I heard a horse neigh, and the te