on. And, hear ye, Boyd Connoway, this I do for the sake
of that hard-working woman, your wife, and not for you, that are but a
careless, idle good-for-nothing!'"

"Deil or man," broke in my grandmother, who thought she had kept silence
long enough, "never was a truer word spoken!"

Boyd Connoway looked pathetically about. He seemed to implore some one
to stand up in his defence. I would have liked to do it, because of his
kindness to me, but dared not before such an assembly and on so solemn
an occasion.

"I put it to the honourable gentlemen now assembled," said Boyd
Connoway, "if a man can rightly be called a lazy good-for-nothing when
he rose at four of the morning to cut his wife's firewood----"

"Should have done it the night before," interrupted my grandmother.

"And was at Urr kirkyard at ten to help dig a grave, handed the service
of cake and wine at twelve, rung the bell, covered in the corp, and
sodded him down as snug as you, Mr. Fiscal, will sleep in your bed this
night----!"

"That will do," said the Fiscal, who thought Boyd Connoway had had quite
enough rope. "Tell us what happened after that--and briefly, as I said
before."

"Why, I went over to Widow McVinnie's to milk her cow. It calved only
last Wednesday, and I am fond of 'beesten cheese.' Besides, the
scripture says, 'Help the widows in their afflictions'--or words to that
effect."

"After this man Lalor Maitland had got into the boat, what happened?"

The Fiscal spoke sharply. He thought he was being played with, when, in
fact, Boyd was only letting his tongue run on naturally.

"Nothing at all, your honour," said Boyd promptly. "The men in the boat
just set their oars to the work and were round the corner in a jiffey. I
ran to the point by the narrow square opening into the soft sandstone
rock, and lying low on my face I could see a lugger close in under the
heugh of Boreland, where she would never have dared to go, save that the
wind was off shore and steady. But after the noise of the oars in the
rowlocks died away I heard no more, and look as I would, I never saw the
lugger slip out of the deep shadow of the heughs. So, there being
nothing further to be done, I filled my pockets with the dulse that
grows there, thin and sweet. For nowhere along the Solway shore does one
get the right purple colour and the clean taste of the dulse as in that
of Portowarren, towards the right-hand nook as you stand looking up the
brae face."

Having