ckets and then snatched it from him), after
which she set out for the Dovecot in a scare about her own identity.

"And now, what doest thou think about it a'?" inquired Sir Joseph
eagerly, to which Stroke made answer, looking at him fixedly.

"The wind is in the west!"

Sir Joseph should have kept this a secret, but soon Stroke heard
Inverquharity prating of it, and he called his lieutenant before him.
Sir Joseph acknowledged humbly that he had been unable to hide it from
Inverquharity, but he promised not to tell Muckle Kenny, of whose
loyalty there were doubts. Henceforth, when the faithful fellow was
Muckle Kenny, he would say doggedly to himself, "Dinna question me,
Kenny. I ken nocht about it."

Dark indeed were now the fortunes of the Pretender, but they had one
bright spot. Miss Ailie had been taken in completely by the trick played
on her, and thus Stroke now got full information of the enemy's doings.
Cathro having failed to dislodge the Jacobites, the seat of war had been
changed by Victoria to the Dovecot, whither her despatches were now
forwarded. That this last one, of which Agnes of Kingoldrum tried in
vain to obtain possession, doubled the price on the Pretender's head,
there could be no doubt; but as Miss Ailie was a notorious Hanoverian,
only the hunted prince himself knew why this should make her cry.

He hinted with a snigger something about an affair he had once had with
the lady.

The Widow and Sir Joseph accepted this explanation, but it made Lady
Griselda rock her arms in irritation.

The reports about Miss Ailie's behavior became more and more alarming.
She walked up and down her bedroom now in the middle of the night. Every
time the knocker clanked she held herself together with both hands.
Agnes had orders not to answer the door until her mistress had keeked
through the window.

"She's expecting a veesitor, methinks," said Corp. This was his bright
day.

"Ay," answered Agnes, "but is't a man-body, or just a woman-body?"

Leaving the rebels in the Lair stunned by Victoria's latest move, we now
return to Thrums, where Miss Ailie's excited state had indeed been the
talk of many. Even the gossips, however, had underestimated her distress
of mind, almost as much as they misunderstood its cause. You must listen
now (will you?) to so mild a thing as the long thin romance of two
maiden ladies and a stout bachelor, all beginning to be old the day the
three of them first drank tea together, a