over his apostacy.

"Ye maun say a worse sweer, Wattie. Deevil is no bad enough."

"I'll droon first!" whimpered Wattie, "and then ye'll get your paiks,
I'm thinking."

Down went Wattie's head into the burn again, and this time he was raised
with his mouth sputtering out the contents it had received.

"I'll say what ye like! _D--n;_ is that bad enough?"

With another unholy shout of derision Wattie was raised and set on the
bridge.

"Noo," said the Whaup, standing over him, "let me tell you this, my man.
The next time ye gang to my faither, and tell a story about any one o'
us, or the next time you say a word against the French lassie, as ye ca'
her, do ye ken what I'll do? I'll take ye back to my faither by the lug,
and I'll tell him ye were sweerin' like a trooper down by the burn, and
every one o' us will testify against you, and then, I'm thinking, it
will be your turn to consider paiks."

Catherine Cassilis, "the French lassie," had arrived at the Manse a few
weeks before, and she had sore need of a champion.

Andrew Bogue, the ancient henchman of the Rev. Gavin Cassilis, minister
of Airlie, who met her at the station, disapproved of her from the first
as a foreign jade dressed so that all the men turned and looked at her
as if she had been a snare of Satan. Then, had not young Lord Earlshope,
after introducing himself, taken a seat in the trap and talked with her
in her own language as if he had known her for years?

"They jabbered away in their foreign lingo," said Andrew that evening to
his wife Leezibeth, the housekeeper "and I'm thinking it was siccan a
language was talked in Sodom and Gomorrah. And he was a' smiles, and she
was a' smiles, and they seemed to think nae shame o' themselves goin'
through a decent countryside!"

The Whaup himself had said, on the night of Coquette's arrival, "Oh,
she's an actress, and I hate actresses!" But before many days had
passed, he completely changed that hasty view. The big, sturdy,
long-legged lad succumbed to the charms of his parentless cousin--the
daughter of the minister's brother, who had settled in France and taken
to himself a French wife--and he became her defender against those
inhabitants of the Manse and the parish--from his brother Wattie to the
pragmatic schoolmaster--whose prejudices she unintentionally outraged.

Even the minister was grieved when Coquette, as her father had called
her, made a casual remark about the "last time she had gone to t