"Important Smuggling Capture.—On the night of the 7th, acting on information received, the Preventive officers of Stranryan (Chief Supervisor Pirlock in command), assisted by a troop of H.M. 27th Dragoons stationed at the same place, succeeded in intercepting a most serious attempt at smuggling at Port Logan. Supervisor Pirlock had had the place under observation for several weeks, and on the evening of the 7th he swooped down upon the law-breakers, completely broke them up, and captured no fewer than thirty large casks of fine liquors, both Dutch and French, probably all that the smuggling ship had been able to put on shore. The vessel was seen and her description will be sent to all ports, harbours, offices, as well as to the general agencies under the charge of H.M. Board of Excise."A few more such successes and our law-breaking friends will fight shy of the district occupied by the keen eyes and ready hands of so able and zealous an officer as Mr. Chief Supervisor Pirlock."
"Important Smuggling Capture.—On the night of the 7th, acting on information received, the Preventive officers of Stranryan (Chief Supervisor Pirlock in command), assisted by a troop of H.M. 27th Dragoons stationed at the same place, succeeded in intercepting a most serious attempt at smuggling at Port Logan. Supervisor Pirlock had had the place under observation for several weeks, and on the evening of the 7th he swooped down upon the law-breakers, completely broke them up, and captured no fewer than thirty large casks of fine liquors, both Dutch and French, probably all that the smuggling ship had been able to put on shore. The vessel was seen and her description will be sent to all ports, harbours, offices, as well as to the general agencies under the charge of H.M. Board of Excise.
"A few more such successes and our law-breaking friends will fight shy of the district occupied by the keen eyes and ready hands of so able and zealous an officer as Mr. Chief Supervisor Pirlock."
When a paragraph such as this came under the notice of Colonel Laurence, he would stamp up and down his room, swearing great oaths, till his majors had to take him in hand to prevent him speaking out in front of the men. He would have liked to throttle, not only Mr. Chief Supervisor Pirlock, but every Preventive officer in the district.
Decidedly there was something to be said for Colonel Laurence. Yet why did he remain? As Louis had hinted, he had more than once exchanged when his regiments had been ordered abroad to the wars, in order to continue in the district. His long experience in the work was urged as a reason. But really the Colonel was hot on the track of his pension. He could not now expect any further promotion, and he knew nothing better to do than just to continue where he was, month after month, till the slow revolution of the years should bring him an income and repose.
If, however, he could lay his hand upon Stair and have him hanged in the teeth of all the lairds in Galloway, that would surely count for something with the Regent, and especially with the Boards of Revenue and Recruitment, which were naturally very sore upon the subject of the aforesaid Stair Garland.
With the coming of Eben the Spy to Isle Rathan a new life began there. At first Patsy was filled with indignation at the trust Stair placed in him. She knew that he had been with Uncle Julian and Stair in the Bothy of Blairmore. She had heard the tale of the test—the test of life or death. But somehow, because she had not seen it—because she had not been with the ex-spy day after day, she could not believe in the reality of his repentance. His deep-rooted admiration for Stair remained in her eyes peculiarly suspect. He seemed to be presuming too much. If she, to whom Stair belonged by right of purchase at so great a price, did not manifest her feelings—what right had he? Of course he had a purpose to serve, and that purpose was to betray them. How else should he have guessed about the island, and why should he come swimming out and interrupting their picnic like that?
Still there was a pleasant side to the matter. The cows were milked, the meals prepared. Fresh water was brought to every chamber by this man who never showed his face outside the house during the day. Patsy and Stair had nothing to do but to stray from one safe cove to another on the seaward side all through these long days, and so, resentment falling away, by and by Patsy fell into talk with Eben. He called her "madame," and rarely concluded a sentence without a reference to "Your husband, madame!"
This Patsy thought a great liberty. What could he know about the matter? He had not seen Saunders Duff's registers, and of a certainty Godfrey McCulloch had not spoken. Still, she finished by liking to hear him say the words, and often left the real Stair idly tossing stones into the water, in order to go into the cool kitchen of Tower Rathan, to sit on one of the ancient oaken chests, a row of which ran round the walls, and hear tales of the dare-devil Stair, and especially to listen for the respectful repetition of her favourite phrase, "Your husband, madame!"
She loved to hear how her husband (she could say the word to herself now sometimes) had accepted the outcast and had treated him like a man when he was trodden under foot. She could not listen often enough to the history of the restitution of the money and jewels with which Eben had ridden away from the White Loch. Stair had insisted on that, though he had no reason to love the Duke of Lyonesse.
Then she would go back and lo! there—prone on the sand, his rough muzzle on Stair's knees, his big brown eyes under shaggy bristles of eyebrow, gazing up into his master's face, lay Whitefoot. Only, such was the fineness of his breeding and the delicacy of his sheep-dog instinct, that he rose instantly when he heard Patsy's returning footsteps, and took himself out of the way. He worshipped none the less, only at a greater distance. Patsy's was now the first right.
"Why do they love you so much, Stair?" said Patsy abruptly, as she sat down beside him after one of these kitchen visits.
"They—who?" said Stair, sleepily. For warm pebbles, warm sands, the lee of a rock and the gentle lap of a sheltered sea make for drowsiness.
"Well," said Patsy, "Eben and Whitefoot there—they don't care a straw about me."
"Whitefoot would defend you with his life," put in Stair, sitting up.
"Yes, because you tell him," said Patsy, pulling discontentedly at a blade of grass, "and as for Eben—he simply cannot keep from singing your praises!"
Stair laughed, gaily for him. He did not often laugh aloud.
"Patsy," he answered, "how many have loved you—Princes and Princesses, men and women in another world than mine? Now, none of these love me—and strange as it may seem, I am not disquieted about the matter."
"I daresay not," snapped Patsy, who this morning for some reason was easily irritated, "but they are not here. Eben and Whitefoot are, and they go about worshipping you. Now, if you expect me to do the same, you are mistaken!"
"I am not expecting anything of the sort," said Stair patiently, looking past Patsy, away out to sea to the poised top of Snaefell lording it above the low-lying channel mists.
"Well then you ought!" cried Patsy, and turning on her heel she sped to the house to keep from crying, she did not in the least know why. And when Stair followed her to ask what was the matter, it stood to reason that he was met by silence and a locked door. If he had had more experience he would have remained where he was and let Patsy find her way back of her own accord.
One morning, a week or two after, Patsy had gone out with her books and Stair was getting ready to follow her to the seaward looking side of the Isle, when Eben called him to the window of the kitchen which overlooked the long ridge of sand, shingle, and razor-like mussel shells which in the deeps of the ebb, constituted a practicable pathway across to the mainland.
For half-a-dozen tides each month, three in the middle of each neap, unless there were heavy winds from the south-west, Isle Rathan became a tidal island, and the ridge could be crossed on foot by those who made haste. This was not, however, often attempted, for the tides and currents were exceedingly tricky in these parts.
Eben pointed with his finger to a faint horizontal ridge on the mainland.
"Do you see anything there, sir?" he asked.
"No," said Stair, anxious to be off to Patsy, "some shepherds on the mainland have been making a new sheep-fold, I suppose."
"A sheep-fold is mostly round, sir," said Eben, "and if you will notice there are two turf dykes one behind the other. I don't like that. Besides, have you seen anybody working there? I have not. And would herds cover their work so neatly with turf? From here it might be twenty years old—only I know it was not there when I passed that way down to the Orraland Point where I began to swim out."
"I see you have an idea," said Stair, "out with it! Tell me what you think!"
"Sir," said Eben McClure, "I have every need to serve you faithfully, and I should never forgive myself if by chance I had brought the enemy on you. I learned from my uncle where you were. He also has grown to trust me, sir, because you found me trustworthy, and he was willing that I should come, in order to be of what help to you I could. He cherishes the lady your wife above all others in the world. I had thought Kennedy McClure a hard, selfish old man, and so he might have been but for her. But he is never tired of telling how she saved him in London, and how she was not ashamed of him even in the company of Princes and all the great folk of the town. Ah, she was counted a world's wonder, sir—our Miss Patsy, if I may make so bold as to call her so—when she was in London. There was no one like her—and it's not coronets she could have married, my uncle says, but crowns!"
"I know—I know," said Stair, somewhat impatiently, "but what is it you are afraid of?"
"The sappers, sir—the little burrowing men. They have far more sense than whole regiments of soldiers, and it is as likely as not that some one of them, anxious for promotion, followed me across country, and watched me down to the point of Orraland. I wish I had been more careful of my footprints, but the woods were soft and I kept under shelter till the last moment!"
"Well, what of it—get on, Eben!"
"Sir, these are sappers' trenches, or I am no judge! And what's more, they are made to command the approach by the ridge to the tail of the island."
"But we are almost at the height of the flood tides, and there can be nothing to fear from that direction till the neaps come, and not then if the south-west wind blows as it has done ever since we came here. Why, we have hardly ever seen the back of the ridge black for half-an-hour."
"I know," said Eben, shaking his head, "but they are long-patienced fellows, these sappers—not like cavalrymen or lazy Preventives, who want nothing better than to lie up with a pipe and a mutchkin!"
"Some night we shall row over and see, Eben," said Stair, preparing to depart. "If they are lying in their rabbit-hutches we might give them a rare fright!"
"No," said Eben, "I don't mind going myself, but what would that child do without you? Answer me that, sir! No, what I want you to do is to send Whitefoot with a message to my uncle and get theGood Intenthere by the next neaps. Could the dog do that, sir? They say he is wise."
"Well," said Stair, considering, "I don't think that Whitefoot could go directly to Supsorrow and find out your uncle. But he could take a message to Jean, if he were put a little bit on the road—say through the Blue Hills glen and over the old bridge of Dee. I daresay he could make it even from here, but he has never been past Dee Bridge by land. Then Jean would send on the note to your uncle by Agnew—he is the youngest and fleetest!"
"He and I shall start to-night," said Eben the Spy. "I shall be back before the morning. I shall see him safe across Tongland Bridge and be home before daybreak. The nights are lengthening."
"If you think it is necessary," said Stair, stepping out.
"Itisnecessary," said Eben, emphatically. "It is so important that I would run all the way myself, if I could do the journey as fast and as surely."
Stair and Patsy spent the day in the usual way out on the cliffs, coming in for their meals as leisurely as to an hotel and as certain that they would find everything in order.
Stair said nothing to Patsy about his talk with Eben. He did not mention the curious ridges so carefully turfed with green which were gradually penning in the end of the shore passage. But in spite of this, he thought a good deal. Who could be at the back of this steady pursuit? Surely not Louis Raincy. No, Raincy was a Galloway man, and even if Patsy were not there to be considered, he would not hunt Stair Garland. He might have his own quarrel with him, but he would not take this way of avenging himself.
That night, as soon as Patsy said good-night and went upstairs, Eben made a parcel of his clothes, and at a sign from his master Whitefoot stood ready to plunge in and swim across along with Eben. His collar, duly charged with Jean's letter, was tied in the bundle along with the ex-spy's clothes, and would be put upon him after the moorland winds had dried the mane of hair about his neck.
"To Jean—you hear, Whitefoot—to Jean!"
And Whitefoot leaped up to lick Stair's face in token of complete understanding.
It was not a long swim, and the pair took the water at the very height of the tide. They would hardly lose any way as they pushed towards the strand beneath the farmhouse of Craigdarroch, which was the nearest point on their road to the old Bridge of Tongland, beyond which Whitefoot knew his trail.
Stair watched them out of sight. They swam silently and evenly into the darkness, and in a quarter of an hour he heard the signal agreed upon—Whitefoot's singing yelp with which he assisted the precentor in starting such minor tunes as Martyrs and Coleshill. Then he turned and went slowly back to the old Tower of Rathan. Patsy's light was not out, and he stood a long while in the courtyard looking up at it.
Many were making sacrifices for Patsy's sake, but none, he thought, such great ones as he. Still, so it was nominated in the bond. And, touched by a memory, he took out his Shakespeare and read the "Merchant of Venice" till he fell asleep.
The candle had burned itself out when he awoke. The early rose of a coming day was looking in at the top of the blinds. He heard the rattle of pebbles tossed against the half-closed wooden shutter. He opened, and there, pale as a spectre, stood Eben McClure. His teeth were chattering, so Stair made haste to let him in. He gave him a strong "four fingers" dram of Angoulême brandy, before making him roll himself up in a blanket and lie down in his warm place. Stair would be cook for one morning.
He did not disturb the sleeper when Patsy came down, smiling and happy, with another day of peaceful pleasure before her in their Rath or Isle of the Fairy Folk.
"Eben McClure needed to send a message to his uncle," he said lightly, "so he swam across with Whitefoot, and being chilled when he got back, I gave him a dose of spirits and made him go to bed."
Patsy made no remark. She had accepted Eben as a fixture in theirménage, and took no further concern about the matter. But Stair looked out many times at the green trenches closing in the land entrance to the isle, and even as he looked, it seemed that during the night the parallels had crept down a little nearer to high-water mark.
If so, Eben the Spy was right, and for Patsy's sake their precautions had not been taken a moment too soon. The sooner theGood Intentwas on the spot the better.
Patsy was a prison-breaker. She had not only resisted but defied lawful authority. She had broken "with the armed hand" into one of his Majesty's defended prisons. She had taken out men awaiting trial for capital offences, and to finish all neatly, she or her followers had burned the Castle of Stranryan.
As for Stair, the counts on his indictment were as the sands by the seashore for multitude. There was no doubt that the sappers would earn the thanks of their superiors, of the whole Board of Excise and of the Office of Recruitment for the two services by handing over the two who had so long terrorized the best efforts of their agents in Galloway. Eben, as a thief and a traitor to his salt, would be an additional prize. Surely all this was worth working and waiting for. So at least thought Colonel Laurence, who had patiently followed them westwards till he came across the tracks of Eben McClure when he prepared to swim across to the island from the point of Orraland.
The days went slowly for Eben and Stair, who were waiting for the neaps and the coming of theGood Intent. They sped fast for Patsy, who now ran unashamed about the island with Stair's hand in hers. Never had there been such a companion. Never had she been so happy.
What troubled the men most was the failure of Whitefoot to return. To account for this, Stair had invented a score of reasons, in none of which he believed himself. It was now Thursday and the day after next, or more exactly during the early morning of Friday, they would see the middle of the neaps. If at all the ridge would be fully uncovered then, and in the absence of a strong south-wester (which now seemed unlikely), the track might remain uncovered for a couple of hours.
All that day there had been unusual semaphore signallings and wavings of flags on the heights facing the island; but Stair, anxious to keep Patsy ignorant and happy as long as possible, still hesitated to tell her. They had gone down to Leg-o'-Mutton Bay where the shells they called by that name were to be found. An absolute silence reigned as they stood together looking out towards the sunset playing on Screel and Ben Gairn, till, with the tail of his eye Stair saw something moving along the ridge above them.
He turned swiftly, and there was Whitefoot, but a Whitefoot who dragged one foot painfully after the other, yet who, at sight of his master, wagged his great tail and gave vent to his old "Aaa-uch" of joy. The dog tried to bound towards them, but he had overestimated his strength. He toppled forward, whereupon Stair ran to him and carried him down in his arms. There was a bullet-hole behind his shoulder, but in spite of that the dog had swam the strait to find his master.
Stair laid him down and Patsy hastily tore off the flounce of a dress to bind about the wound. Stair took off his coat and wrapped Whitefoot in it. But he was not easy, shaking his head and turning it about to indicate that he had some message which must be delivered immediately. To quiet him, Stair undid the collar and pulled out a little square missive.
"The 'Good Intent' will be with you and send a boat Friday morning!"
As soon as Whitefoot saw the white half sheet in Stair's hands, he crawled a little farther up on his master's knees. His beautiful eyes, that were fixed on Stair's face, gradually blurred and grew filmy. He moved his head restlessly as he was wont to do when seeking a caress. Stair's hand was laid on his head to soothe him. Whitefoot stretched himself out on his master's knees for the last time with the long, contented sigh of one about to sleep, and shut his beautiful eyes for ever. Only his tongue continued to lick his master's hand for another moment or two.
"Oh, Stair," cried Patsy, "how he loved you—he died for you!"
"No, dear," said Stair softly, "for us!"
The next was a day of anxious tension. The long sinuous snakeback of the shell-ridge showed black all its length at the bottom of the afternoon ebb, but contrary to their expectations nothing moved in the camp of the enemy. It was evident that they were waiting for the early morning. The water would be at its lowest shortly after three, when the rush could be made with sufficient light to see. This was the more necessary as there were many quicksands to either side and in one or two places the ridge was not quite continuous. The winter storms altered it, sometimes by many feet, leaving isolated humps and mounds with quicksands about them, which might easily trap the unwary. The enemy was evidently not going to take any risks.
After Whitefoot's death Stair had perforce to tell everything to Patsy. It was wonderful how it strengthened and reaffirmed her.
"Why did you not tell me?" she said. "Why did you take counsel with everybody but me?"
"I did not," said Stair, smiling at her. "It was Eben who discovered everything, and then came and asked me. I thought that there might be nothing in it, and it was not till I was perfectly sure, that I saw the necessity of disturbing you."
"You will never treat me as a child again?" she had her hands on his sleeve now, and was looking up into his face.
"No," he said, "I know too well who carried me off here, breaking prisons to get me—and has not known what to do with me since!"
"Oh, don't say that, Stair. I love you very dearly—more than I thought possible."
He gazed at her for a moment, saw that his time had not yet come, and then gently patted her cheek, so gently that she did not resent the caress. All that day they watched the curving trenches from a little angle of the tower from which a rifle could be brought to bear on the shell causeway. That afternoon seemed everlasting. It was a clear, still twilight, and they did not dine till nearly midnight. If theGood Intentwere to send a boat it would be to the back of the island which the tide never left. Indeed, Leg-o'-Mutton Bay was the only spot where a boat could land. There was always deep water there.
At one o'clock Stair saw a ship's lights very far away. It was very doubtful, even supposing that she were theGood Intent, that she could be there in time. But in the crucial hours, Eben the Spy proved himself wonderfully helpful and encouraging. His Uncle Kennedy never promised without keeping his promise. There might be a bit of a skirmish as the men were coming over, but he could warrant that they would be safe on board along with Captain Penman before ever a soldier set his foot on the island. On this he would pledge his life.
In view of all the facts this was not very convincing, but all the same it was distinctly cheering.
The blank night wore to a kind of grey over the sea, though the land was still in deep shadow. Across the grey ran the coils of the black causeway. The light was coming fast now and for the first time Eben lost his equanimity of spirit. He was in haste to have them gone out of the Tower.
"Take Mrs. Stair down to the landing-place, sir," he pleaded, "take her to the little cove where the boat will come in. They may be on the shell-track any time now."
And as he spoke both Stair and he heard and recognized the loud rattle of a ship's anchor chain.
"There," he cried, "off with you! There is not a moment to lose. Ah, there they come. But that is only the first of them. I can easily stop these. Out at the back door! The wicket in the wall is open. Keep on through the hollow and you will find the boat ready. Do not wait for me. I have my own life arranged for. Do not fear for me!"
He hustled them out with a haste which left them no time for explanation. The men who were hastening across the causeway had less than a mile to run. It was, however, by no means easy going, and it would take them at least ten good minutes. Stair took Patsy down to the Shell Bay by the safest path, and even before they reached it they could hear the beginning of a fusillade in their rear. The boat from theGood Intentwas already on the way, rowed by four sturdy seamen, yet it seemed to them both as though she would never arrive. They looked behind them, expecting every moment to see a rush of men come at them over the crown of the island.
Stair could stand it no longer. He must see what was going on, and he mounted the rough sides of the little heathery knoll called quaintly Ben Rathan. Patsy would not be left behind and he found her at his side. She could, in fact, have been there long before him.
But what they saw struck them dumb.
In a rough trench at the island end of the shell causeway, and quite clearly evident beneath them in the young light of the morning, were three figures, two of them obviously dummies, but with guns at their shoulders and hats on their shapeless heads. Bounding hither and thither, now along the top of the trench, now rising breast-high to fire was a man so like Stair Garland that Patsy had to look again at the blond giant beside her to make sure. Then they understood.
It was the ex-spy clad in the cast-off suit which Stair had taken off the first morning after their coming to the island. Stair's well-known bonnet with its tall feather was on Eben's head, and after every shot or two, he waved it in the air and shouted to the assailants to come on. The half-dozen sappers who had tried the first rush were now lying flat behind stones, and one lay bunched up as if wounded. The false Stair ran to and fro firing the muskets over the shoulders of his auxiliary potato-sacks. Then he shouted again defiantly, and leaping to the cliff's edge where he stood clear against the sky-line, he fired again. Patsy could see the mud-and-water spurt up from where the bullet struck. From the mainland a score more of men took the pathway, keeping as widely apart as possible. These were Colonel Laurence and his first reinforcement. Up went the feathered bonnet in the air as Eben dived back into his rude trench.
The sailors kept calling now from the boat, eagerly, imperiously. It was necessary for them to return. Patsy was placed on board and Stair wished to go back and help to defend the island. He could not leave Eben McClure thus. But Patsy was out on the shingle in a moment. If Stair went back so should she. Eben McClure had given her a letter which, he said, would explain everything. It was only to be read aboard theGood Intentafter the anchor was up.
So they put about and in a few minutes they were having their hands wrung off by Captain Penman on his own quarter-deck.
"I am glad to see you," he cried. "I thought I heard firing. They must have been pretty close—not much sea-way in your last tack, eh? But come below. You will find everything in my cabin. The owner said most particular that it was to be made all spick and span for you. Honoured I am to see you again on my ship, Mistress Garland!"
As they turned the corner of Isle Rathan, Stair and Patsy could see that the sham defences had been carried with a rush, and that something lay very still behind the hastily-dug trench. Patsy's keen eyes noted that it was still wearing Stair's bonnet.
She turned and ran below weeping bitterly.
"Oh, Stair, they do not love you better than I!" she wailed as she clung passionately to him; "no—not though they die for you, and I am only a drag on you. For I love you! I love you—and I too would die for you!"
Her arms were about her husband's neck and her lips were pressed for the first time to his.
"Dear," he answered softly, "perhaps you were meant to live for me!"
The letter which Eben had given to Patsy was a very simple one.
"Dear Sir and Madame" (it read), "if we are hard-pressed I am going to fight them off to give you time to get away. I was a bad man till Mr. Stair believed in me. I think it an honour to die for him and for his wife. Madame, be kind to him, for he deserves it. There is no such man in this world, I do assure you of that."Your obdt. humble servant, "E. McClure."P.S.—I should like Mr. Stair to tell my uncle that I did not disgrace the family name."
"Dear Sir and Madame" (it read), "if we are hard-pressed I am going to fight them off to give you time to get away. I was a bad man till Mr. Stair believed in me. I think it an honour to die for him and for his wife. Madame, be kind to him, for he deserves it. There is no such man in this world, I do assure you of that.
"Your obdt. humble servant, "E. McClure.
"P.S.—I should like Mr. Stair to tell my uncle that I did not disgrace the family name."
In a letter left in charge of Captain Penman, Kennedy McClure had sent Patsy a packet of banknotes with his love. The emigrants were to be taken to Leghorn and landed there. Thereafter they could remain at Pisa or Florence as suited them best till the storm blew over and their friends made arrangements. Miss Patsy must not mind taking a little money now, for he had meant her to be his heir ever since he had charged himself with her future by helping her to run away from princesses and suchlike great people in London. And as for Stair Garland, he really had been owing him all that and more for a long time.
It was the autumn of the year after Waterloo when they next set foot on Scottish soil. They might have come sooner, but while Napoleon ruled communications were difficult, and now there were three of them to think about. Recently, however, Kennedy McClure had died of a sudden apoplectic seizure and had left Stair a rich man. But the estate was one which needed very constant and personal attention.
Uncle Julian they had already seen twice in Florence and once in Rome. Old Brunschweig was also dead and there was more than a likelihood that the Princess would not bear the title of Princess much longer. She would lose her rank, but she would be rich enough and happy enough to make up for any loss of dignity under the name of Mrs. Julian Wemyss.
Adam Ferris and Miss Aline received them on the quay. She had got the house of Ladykirk in order for them. She had opened up the orchard portion and given them the whole of the east wing to themselves. She would be more than ever in the garden among her flowers. The stables also were at hand. Stair would need many horses for his riding if he meant to follow in the footsteps of Kennedy McClure, and she could never, never bide to see her darling enter as a bride into a house with the mischancy name of Supsorrow. Besides, she herself had no heirs, and it was not meet that Ladykirk and Balmacminto should go to any other than Patsy. It would fit in fine with the Ferris properties some day, when young Kennedy Ebenezer Garland thought of settling!
So she chattered as they drove through Stranryan, and the folk flocked to their doors to see the strange foreign lady and gentleman whose names even they had not yet heard. On this point Mr. Ferris had thought it best to be silent, and with some difficulty had persuaded Miss Aline to do the same.
Well, she agreed, they would be tired, the poor things. What need to have all the mob at their heels shouting and "yellyhooing"?
But when they passed the blackened walls of the ancient prison, which had not been touched since that last dire rising of the Bands under Patsy's leadership, husband and wife clasped hands under cover of the carriage-rug, and Miss Aline smiled as she caught them doing it, which pleased her better than many fortunes.
It was of a surety the new day, and all the ill old times of struggle and passion had passed away—as well from their hearts as from the old mother Province which they loved.
[1]The Galloway War Committee of 1638(Nicholson, Kirkcudbright).
[1]The Galloway War Committee of 1638(Nicholson, Kirkcudbright).