rambling on the steep banks of the Stony Bottom.
There he lay for hours, unnoticed and kicking, until James Moore and
Owd Bob came upon him at length, nearly exhausted. But M'Adam was before
them. Standing on the far bank with Red Wull by his side, he called
across the gulf with apparent concern: "He's bin so sin' yesternight."
Often James Moore, with all his great strength of character, could
barely control himself.

There were two attempts to patch up the feud. Jim Mason, who went about
the world seeking to do good, tried in his shy way to set things right.
But M'Adam and his Red Wull between them soon shut him and Betsy up.

"You mind yer letters and yer wires, Mr. Poacher-Postman. Ay, I saw 'em
baith: th' ain doon by the Haughs, t'ither in the Bottom. And there's
Wullie, the humorsome chiel, havin' a rare game wi' Betsy." There,
indeed, lay the faithful Betsy, suppliant on her back, paws up, throat
exposed, while Red Wull, now a great-grown puppy, stood over her, his
habitually evil expression intensified into a fiendish grin, as with
wrinkled muzzle and savage wheeze he waited for a movement as a pretext
to pin: "Wullie, let the leddy be--ye've had yer dinner."

Parson Leggy was the other would-be mediator; for he hated to see the
two principal parishioners of his tiny cure at enmity. First he tackled
James Moore on the subject; but that laconic person cut him short with,
"I've nowt agin the little mon," and would say no more. And, indeed, the
quarrel was none of his making.

Of the parson's interview with M'Adam, it is enough to say here that,
in the end, the angry old minister would of a surety have assaulted his
mocking adversary had not Cyril Gilbraith forcibly withheld him.

And after that the vendetta must take its course unchecked.

David was now the only link between the two farms. Despite his father's
angry commands, the boy clung to his intimacy with the Moores with a
doggedness that no thrashing could overcome. Not a minute of the day
when out of school, holidays and Sundays included, but was passed at
Kenmuir. It was not till late at night that he would sneak back to the
Grange, and creep quietly up to his tiny bare room in the roof--not
supperless, indeed, motherly Mrs. Moore had seen to that. And there he
would lie awake and listen with a fierce contempt as his father, hours
later, lurched into the kitchen below, lilting liquorishly:

"We are na fou, we're nae that fou,
But just a dra