of sandy hair.

"I doubt it's a false alarm," said he. "Maybe I'd ha' done well to bide
where I was; but now I've come so far, I'll break my fast with the
regiment."

He clapped spurs to his horse, and away he went down the brae.

"I ken him weel," said our student, nodding after him. "He's a lawyer
in Edinburgh, and a braw hand at the stringin' of verses. Wattie Scott
is his name."

None of us had heard of it then; but it was not long before it was the
best known name in Scotland, and many a time we thought of how he
speered his way of us on the night of the terror.

But early in the morning we had our minds set at ease. It was grey and
cold, and my mother had gone up to the house to make a pot of tea for
us, when there came a gig down the road with Dr. Horscroft of Ayton in
it and his son Jim. The collar of the doctor's brown coat came over his
ears, and he looked in a deadly black humour; for Jim, who was but
fifteen years of age, had trooped off to Berwick at the first alarm with
his father's new fowling piece. All night his dad had chased him, and
now there he was, a prisoner, with the barrel of the stolen gun sticking
out from behind the seat. He looked as sulky as his father, with his
hands thrust into his side-pockets, his brows drawn down, and his lower
lip thrusting out.

"It's all a lie!" shouted the doctor as he passed. "There has been no
landing, and all the fools in Scotland have been gadding about the roads
for nothing."

His son Jim snarled something up at him on this, and his father struck
him a blow with his clenched fist on the side of his head, which sent
the boy's chin forward upon his breast as though he had been stunned.
My father shook his head, for he had a liking for Jim; but we all walked
up to the house again, nodding and blinking, and hardly able to keep our
eyes open now that we knew that all was safe, but with a thrill of joy
at our hearts such as I have only matched once or twice in my
lifetime.

Now all this has little enough to do with what I took my pen up to tell
about; but when a man has a good memory and little skill, he cannot draw
one thought from his mind without a dozen others trailing out behind it.
And yet, now that I come to think of it, this had something to do with
it after all; for Jim Horscroft had so deadly a quarrel with his father,
that he was packed off to the Berwick Academy, and as my father had long
wished me to go there, he took advantage of thi