strength to slit
your wizzards yet. Tell him I died under the Black!'

"And Bridget, who was feared herself, said, 'Whist, for God's sake, do
not bring a curse on the house!'

"And then he just cursed the house from flooring to roof-tree, and so
went to his own place!

"Dead? Well, yes--dead and buried is old Dickie Wilkes. But poor Israel
Kinmont is quite brokenhearted. He says that Dick was the first that
ever broke away, and that he is not long for this world himself now that
he has lost Dick. It was always cut-and-come-again when you were
converting Dick.

"But Israel has an explanation, poor old fellow.

"'It was not Grace that missed fire,' he says, 'but me, the unworthy
marksman. And for that I shall be smitten like the men who, with
unanointed eyes, looked on the ark of God that time it went up the
valley from Ekron to Bethshemish, with the cows looking back and lowing
for their calves all the way. I were always main sorry for them cows!'
old Israel says."

[Footnote 2: Harvest home merrymakings.]

CHAPTER XL

THE GREAT "TABERNACLE" REVIVAL

Though Boyd Connoway had not said anything directly threatening the
house of Heathknowes or its inmates, his story of his own "conversion"
and the death of Dick Wilkes under the Black Flag somehow made us
vaguely uneasy. The door of the house was locked at eight. The gates of
the yard barricaded as in the old time of the sea raids from the _Golden
Hind_.

So strong was the feeling that Irma would gladly have returned before
our time to the little White House above the meadow flats, and to the
view of the Pentlands turning a solid green butt towards the Archers'
Hall of the Guid Toon of Edinburgh.

But it was not so easy to quit Heathknowes. My grandmother held tightly
to Duncan the Second. I found myself in good case, after the fatigues of
the town, to carry out some work on my own account. This, of course, for
the sake of my wife's happiness, I would have given up, but after all
Irma's plans went to pieces upon the invincible determination of Sir
Louis to remain. He was now a lad of seventeen, but older looking than
his age. He had his own room at Heathknowes, his books, his occupations.
Indeed we seldom saw him except at meals, and even then often in the
middle of dinner he would rise, bow haughtily to the company, and retire
without uttering a word. He had learned the lesson from Lalor that plain
farm people were no society for such as he. He went