were safely housed
within the defenced place of Heathknowes, guarded by William Lyon and
his three stout sons, and mothered by all the hidden tenderness of my
grandmother's big, imperious, volcanic heart.

Only my Aunt Jen watched jealously with a half-satisfied air and took
counsel with herself as to what the end of these things might be.

CHAPTER XVI

CASTLE CONNOWAY

Meanwhile Boyd Connoway was in straits. Torn between two emotions, he
was pleased for once to have found a means of earning his living and
that of his family--especially the latter. For his own living was like
that of the crows, "got round the country somewhere!" But with the
lightest and most kindly heart in the world, Boyd Connoway found himself
in trouble owing to the very means of opulence which had brought content
to his house.

On going home on the night after the great attack on Marnhoul, weary of
directing affairs, misleading the dragoons, whispering specious theories
into the ear of the commanding officer and his aides, he had been met at
the outer gate of his cabin by a fact that overturned all his notions of
domestic economy. Ephraim, precious Ephraim, the Connoway family pig,
had been turned out of doors and was now grunting disconsolately,
thrusting a ringed nose through the bars of Paradise. Now Boyd knew that
his wife set great store by Ephraim. Indeed, he had frequently been
compared, to his disadvantage, with Ephraim and his predecessors in the
narrow way of pigs. Ephraim was of service. What would the "poor
childer," what would Bridget herself do without Ephraim? Bridget was not
quite sure whether she kept Ephraim or whether Ephraim kept her. At any
rate it was not to Boyd Connoway that she and her offspring were anyways
indebted for care and sustenance.

"The craitur," said Bridget affectionately, "he pays the very rint!"

But here, outside the family domain, was Ephraim, the beloved of his
wife's heart, actually turned out upon a cold and unfeeling world, and
with carefully spaced grunts of bewilderment expressing his discontent.
If such were Ephraim's fate, how would the matter go with him? Boyd
Connoway saw a prospect of finding a husband and the father of a family
turned from his own door, and obliged to return and take up his quarters
with this earlier exile.

The Connoway family residence was a small and almost valueless leasehold
from the estate of General Johnstone. The house had always been
tumbledown, and t