d her
name Kate Maxwell, called Mickle Kate o' the Shore. Her father and all
her folk were smugglers, as, I understand, are the most of the farmers
along the Solway side. Some of these she could doubtless have married,
but Kate herself had always looked higher. The son of a farmer over the
hill, from a place called the Boreland of Colvend, had wintered sheep on
her father's lands. Many a sore cold morning (so she said) had they gone
out together to clear the snow from the feeding troughs. I suppose that
was how it began, but in addition the lad had ambition. He learned well
and readily, and after a while he went into a lawyer's office in
Dumfries, while Kate o' the Shore went abroad with the family of a Leith
merchant, to serve at Rotterdam. She wanted to save money for the house
she was going to set up with the lawyer's clerk. So, rather than come
back at the year's end, she took the place which the Governor of Dinant
Castle offered her, and he was no other than our cousin Lalor.

"In a little while Kate of the Shore had grown to hate our cousin. Why,
I cannot tell, for he always bowed to her as to a lady, and indeed
showed her far more kindness than ever he used to us. When we wanted a
little play on the terrace or a sweetcake from the town, we tried at
first to get Kate to ask for us. But afterwards she would not. And she
grew determined to leave the Castle of Dinant as soon as might be,
making her escape and taking us with her. Her Boreland lad, Tam Hislop,
had told her all about the estates and the great house standing empty.
So nothing would do but that Kate o' the Shore would come to this house
with us, where we would take possession, and hold it against all comers.

"'It is very difficult,' said Kate's friend, the Dumfries clerk, 'to put
any one out of his own house.' Indeed he did not think that even the
very Court of Session could do it."

"So during the governor's absence we brought little Louis from Dinant to
Antwerp, where we hid him with some friends of Kate's who are Free
Traders, and ran cargoes to the Isle of Man and the Solway shore. Kind
they were, stout bold men and appeared to hold their lives cheap
enough--also, for that matter, the lives of those who withstood them.

"Many of them were Kirkbean men, near kinsfolk of Kate o' the Shore, and
others from Colvend--Hislops, Hendersons and McKerrows, long rooted in
the place. But when we were in mid-passage, we were chased and almost
taken by a schoon