e as never man yet
spake. And never afterwards, though he sometimes wandered from
Granny's teachings, did those Sabbath days lose their hold upon his
life.

And so the spring slipped into summer, and one evening a new element
came into his life. He was lying on the doorstone, his feet in the
cool, dewy grass, dreamily watching the fireflies sparkling away down
in the pasture by the woods, and listening to the hoarse cry of the
night hawks as they swooped overhead. It was a warm evening, and the
leaves of the Silver Maple, still touched by the hot glow of the
sunset, hung motionless in the still air.

Rory came out with his fiddle, and, sitting with his chair tilted
against the house, droned out a low, sweet, yearning song for Bonny
Prince Charlie who would return no more, no more. Grandaddy sat near
on a bench smoking contentedly. Since the day of the first prayer
meeting at Long Lauchie's, Big Malcolm had lived a life of peace, and
had once more regained his attitude of happy, kind complacency. Old
Farquhar was gone; he had disappeared when the Silver Maple was putting
forth its buds, and had gone "a kiltin' owre the brae," as he musically
expressed it to Scotty; but everyone knew that he would come back in
the autumn as surely as the wild ducks went south. Indoors, close to
the candle, sat Hamish poring over "Waverley," and Callum could be
heard tramping about in the loft, preparing to go off for the evening.
Callum took great pains with his toilette these evenings, Scotty
noticed, though the boys did not tease him any more about going to see
Mary Lauchie; indeed, there were no more good-natured allusions to his
courtship. Instead, Scotty had overheard Rory tell Callum, in the barn
one day, that "he'd go sparkin' old Teenie McCuaig, though she was
seventy and hadn't a tooth in her head, before he'd be seen going down
to the Flats to see an Irish girl." And Callum had seized him by the
shoulders and flattened him up against the wall until he roared for
mercy. There was always something in the home atmosphere when Callum
started off of an evening now that vaguely reminded Scotty of those
terrible days following Grandaddy's fight in the Glen. He felt
anxiously that his hero was doing something of which his family
disapproved, and wondered fearfully what it might be.

His mind was turned from the contemplation of these difficulties by a
sudden change in Rory's tune. He stopped in the midst of his low,
wail