oment the sun would be out of sight, Annie, who was helping to fasten
up the cows for the night, drawing iron chains round their soft necks,
saw a long shadow coming in at the narrow entrance of the yard. It came
in and in; and was so long in coming in, that she began to feel as if
it was something not quite _cannie_, and to fancy herself frightened.
But, at length, she found that the cause of the great shadow was only a
little man; and that this little man was no other than her father's
cousin, Robert Bruce. Alas! how little a man may cast a great shadow!

He came up to Annie, and addressed her in the smoothest voice he could
find, fumbling at the same time in his coat-pocket.

"Hoo are ye the nicht dawtie? Are ye verra weel? An' hoo's yer auntie?"

He waited for no reply to any of these questions, but went on.

"See what I hae brocht ye frae the chop."

So saying, he put into her hand about half-a-dozen _sweeties_, screwed
up in a bit of paper. With this gift he left her, and walked on to the
open door of the house, which, as a cousin, he considered himself
privileged to enter unannounced even by a knock. He found the mistress
of it in the kitchen, superintending the cooking of the supper.

"Hoo are ye the nicht, Marget?" he said, still in a tone of
conciliatory smoothness, through which, however, he could not prevent a
certain hardness from cropping out plentifully. "Ye're busy as usual, I
see. Weel, the hand o' the diligent maketh rich, ye ken."

"That portion o' the Word maun be o' leemited application, I doot,"
returned Marget, as, withdrawing her hand from her cousin's, she turned
again to the pot hanging over the fire. "No man daurs to say that my
han' has not been the han' o' the diligent; but Guid kens I'm nane the
richer."

"We maunna repine, Marget. Richt or wrang, it's the Lord's will."

"It's easy to you, Robert Bruce, wi' yer siller i' the bank, to speik
that gait til a puir lone body like me, that maun slave for my bread
whan I'm no sae young as I micht be. No that I'm like to dee o' auld
age either."

"I haena sae muckle i' the bank as some folk may think; though what
there is is safe eneuch. But I hae a bonny business doun yonner, and it
micht be better yet. It's jist the land o' Goshen, only it wants a
wheen mair tap-dressin'."

"Tak it frae the bank, than, Robert."

"The bank! said ye, Marget? I canna do that."

"And what for no?"

"'Cause I'm jist like the hens, Marget. Gin they dinn