were tears in his eyes, showing me the end of his watch-fob from which
the bit of money hung.

"The dear little thing had thought I really had not a penny in the
world and had brought her only one to sacrifice upon the altar of our
friendship. Oh, Jock Stair," and the union between us spoke in the
words, "how are you and I to raise up a soul like this and keep it
unspotted from the world?"

As I stated at the beginning of my story, I have no intention of saying
a word of Nancy's charities or of her verse-making save when necessary
for the clearness of my tale, but I find the time has now come when
some mention of the first must be made. It could be judged from the
anecdote already told, of her bringing "her people" to Stair, that she
formed strong attachments; but as time went by I found that this
affection extended to almost everything that lived. She was a lawless
little body, going around the grounds at her own pleasure, and bringing
back some living thing at every expedition to be cared for at the
house. These findings included lame dogs, rabbits, cats, and finally
she came into the library, breathless:

"I got a boy to-day, Jock," she said, exactly as I might have stated I
had caught a fish. "A boy," she repeated, every feature in her face
alight; "Father Michel's got him."

"For Heaven's sake, Nancy," I inquired, "what do you intend to do with
him?"

"Keep him," she answered.

Going down with her to inspect this new treasure, I found a lad eight
or ten years of age, very sickly, with a hump upon his back, and of a
notably unprepossessing appearance, carrying a fiddle, and evidently
forsaken by some strolling player. She had set her mind upon his
staying, and he stayed; but finding the trouble her accumulated
possessions were giving at Stair, she showed me within the week a bit
of her power to get her own way; a thought which afterward bore such
large results for the whole of Scotland.

The former lord, my honored father, had erected under some trees far
off by the burn water several small stone houses for the servants which
my beautiful Irish mother brought with her from her own country.
Because my bachelor ways had needed little service these dwellings had
gradually fallen into disuse and disrepair, the few serving people I
required finding abundant lodgment in the attic chambers. These tiny
houses, built of gray stone, with ivy growing around the windows, had
taken Nancy's fancy from the instant her eye