st three 'bouts."

"Dan, Dan," said I, "do you think of nothing but women and horses?
Have ye never learned the lesson of Joseph?"

"Man, Hamish," says he, with a whimsical smile and a hand at his
moustache, "ye should put a' things in their proper order. Horses and
weemen noo. It's not a bad thing--a while wi' a lass after the horses
are bedded and foddered, but horses first; and as for Joseph"--his
smile broadened until I could see his teeth--"if it had been Dauvit the
leddy had met on the stair, the meenisters wid never hiv heard a cheep
about it. . . .

"It's a fine lesson yon, I aye think, for auld men to be preaching, but
deevil a word about their ain youthfu' rants. Ye're a lusty lad
yirsel', and there's many a cheery nicht among the lasses wi'
petticoats and short-goons, and I'll teach ye hoo tae whistle them oot
if ye would leave your books and come raking wi' Dan."

We had unyoked the horses and got astride, and when we came to the gate
there was the bonny spaewife carrying a bairn in a tartan shawl. Dan
drew up, and I also; so there we stood, the horses in an impatient
semi-circle on the road, Dan and I on horseback, and the woman looking
up at us.

She had the blackest eyes I ever saw, and hair black and curly as a
water-dog's clustered over her head, and the wee rain-drops clung about
the curls round her ears and brow. Her nose was delicate and
faultless, and her complexion was that born of sun and rain and wind.
There seemed a smile to play round her red lips, and a sombreness about
her eyes (so that she held mine fixed), until Dan spoke.

"I think, Belle," said he, "you're gettin' bonnier, and if it wasna for
the wean I would leave a kiss on your bonny red mouth."

Round the pupils of her black eyes a little ring began to glow, as
though a light came from a great distance through darkness, her white
teeth bit on her under lip, and she stepped closer to Dan's horse.

"Haud away, woman, haud away, for the love o' your Maker; the stallion
canna thole weemen about him."

I fear me the town had taken some of the game out of me, for when I saw
the big dark horse flatten his ears, the wicked eyes rolling, and the
great fore-hoofs drumming on the road, ready to leap and batter the
woman and her bairn to a bloody pulp fornent me, my stomach turned, as
we say, and I felt sick and giddy. Many a morning had I stood at the
loose-box door and watched the devil in the horse and the devil in the
man batt