me for
strength of voice to vanquish strength of argument, they joined in
right lustily and roared the little man down, for all the world like the
gentlemen who rule the Empire at Westminster.

Tammas was an easy subject for M'Adam to draw, but David was an easier.
Insults directed at himself the boy bore with a stolidity born of long
use. But a poisonous dart shot against his friends at Kenmuir never
failed to achieve its object. And the little man evinced an amazing
talent for the concoction of deft lies respecting James Moore.

"I'm hearin'," said he, one evening, sitting in the kitchen, sucking his
twig; "I'm hearin' James Moore is gaein' to git married agin."

"Yo're hearin' lies--or mair-like tellin' 'em," David answered shortly.
For he treated his father now with contemptuous indifference.

"Seven months sin' his wife died," the little man continued
meditatively. "Weel, I'm on'y 'stonished he's waited sae lang. Ain
buried, anither come on--that's James Moore."

David burst angrily out of the room.

"Gaein' to ask him if it's true?" called his father after him. "Gude
luck to ye--and him."

David had now a new interest at Kenmuir. In Maggie he found an endless
source of study. On the death of her mother the girl had taken up the
reins of government at Kenmuir; and gallantly she played her part,
whether in tenderly mothering the baby, wee Anne, or in the sterner
matters of household work. She did her duty, young though she was,
with a surprising, old-fashioned womanliness that won many a smile
of approval from her father, and caused David's eyes to open with
astonishment.

And he soon discovered that Maggie, mistress of Kenmuir, was another
person from his erstwhile playfellow and servant.

The happy days when might ruled right were gone, never to be recalled.
David often regretted them, especially when in a conflict of tongues,
Maggie, with her quick answers and teasing eyes, was driving him sulky
and vanquished from the field. The two were perpetually squabbling now.
In the good old days, he remembered bitterly, squabbles between them
were unknown. He had never permitted them; any attempt at independent
thought or action was as sternly quelled as in the Middle Ages. She must
follow where he led on--"Ma word!"

Now she was mistress where he had been master; hers was to command, his
to obey. In consequence they were perpetually at war. And yet he would
sit for hours in the kitchen and watch her, as she w