p his chin in a challenge. "And I learned one thing at the
courting of her which is the gist of my word of wisdom to you, Colin.
Keep it in mind till you need it. It's this: There's one thing a woman
will put up with blandly in every man but the one man she has a notion
of, and that's the absence of conceit about himself or her." In the
field by the river, the harvesters sat at a mid-day meal, contentedly
eating their bannock and cheese. They were young folks all, at the age
when toil and plain living but give a zest to the errant pleasures of
life, so they filled their hour of leisure with gallivanting among the
mown and gathered grass. And oh! _mo chridhe_, but that was long ago!
Let no one, remembering the charm of an autumn field in his youth, test
its cheerfulness when he has got up in years. For he will find it lying
under a sun less genial than then; he will fret at some influence lost;
the hedges tall and beautiful will have turned to stunted boundaries
upon his fancy; he will ache at the heart at the memory of those old
careless crops and reapers when he sits, a poor man or wealthy, among
the stubble of grass and youth.

As I lay on the shady side of an alder bank watching our folk at their
gambols, I found a serenity that again set me at my ease with the
Provost's daughter. I gathered even the calmness to invite her to sit
beside me, and she made no demur.

"You are short of reapers, I think, by the look of them," she said; "I
miss some of the men who were here last year."

They were gone with MacCailein, I explained, as paid volunteers.

"Oh! those wars!" she cried sadly. "I wish they were ended. Here are
the fields, good crops, food and happiness for all, why must men be
fighting?"

"Ask your Highland heart," said I. "We are children of strife."

"In my heart," she replied, "there's but love for all. I toss sleepless,
at night, thinking of the people we know--the good, kind, gallant; merry
lads we know--waging savage battle for something I never had the wit to
discover the meaning of."

"The Almighty's order--we have been at it from the birth of time."

"So old a world might have learned," she said, "to break that order when
they break so many others. Is his lordship likely to be back soon?"

"I wish he might be," said I, with a dubious accent, thinking of the
heather above the myrtle and MacCailein's head on a post "Did you hear
of the Macaulay beldame shot by Roderick?"

"Yes," she said; "an ugl