f those that had gone to the kail-pots of Antrim
and Athole, stalked about with heads high, foreign to this causied and
gravelled country, clucking eagerly for meat I made my way amid the bird
of the sea and the bird of the wood and common bird of the yard with
a divided mind, seeing them with the eye for future recollection, but
seeing them not Peats were at every close-mouth, at every door almost
that was half-habitable, and fuel cut from the wood, and all about the
thoroughfare was embarrassed.

I had a different decision at every step, now to seek the girl, now to
go home, now finding the most heartening hints in the agitation of the
parents, anon troubled exceedingly with the reflection that there was
something of an unfavourable nature in the demeanour of her mother,
however much the father's badinage might soothe my vanity.

I had made up my mind for the twentieth time to go the length of
Carlunnan and face her plump and plain, when behold she came suddenly
round the corner at the Maltland where the surviving Lowland troops were
gathered! M'Iver was with her, and my resolution shrivelled and shook
within me like an old nut kernel. I would have turned but for the
stupidity and ill-breeding such a movement would evidence, yet as I held
on my way at a slower pace and the pair approached, I felt every limb an
encumbrance, I felt the country lout throbbing in every vein.

Betty almost ran to meet me as we came closer together, with an
agreeableness that might have pleased me more had I not the certainty
that she would have been as warm to either of the two men who had
rescued her from her hiding in the wood of Strongara, and had just come
back from her country's battles with however small credit to themselves
in the result. She was in a very happy mood, for, like all women, she
could readily forget the large and general vexation of a reverse to her
people in war if the immediate prospect was not unpleasant and things
around were showing improvement Her eyes shone and sparkled, the
ordinary sedate flow of her words was varied by little outbursts of
gaiety. She had been visiting the child at Carlunnan, where it had
been adopted by her kinswoman, who made a better guardian than its
grandmother, who died on her way to Dunbarton.

"What sets you on this road?" she asked blandly.

"Oh, you have often seen me on this road before," I said, boldly and
with meaning. Ere I went wandering we had heard the rivers sing many
a