y officers but a lower plane of the
burgh's manhood, the salvage and the wreckage of the wars, privatemen
and sergeants, by a period of strife and travel made in some degree
unfit for the tame ways of peace in a stagnant burgh. They told the old
tales of the bivouac; they sang its naughty or swaggering songs. By a
plain deal door and some glasses of spirit they removed themselves from
the dull town drowsing in the night, and in the light of the Sergeant
More's cruisie moved again in the sacked towns of Ciudad Rodrigo,
Badajos and San Sebastian, gorged anew, perhaps, with blood and lust.

Miss Mary and Gilian passed the door of the Sergeant More hurriedly, she
deaf to its carousal, he remembering all at once and finding wake anew
his first feelings when he stood in the same room before the half-pay
officers at their midday drams. He had become a little tired of this
quest all to gratify an old maid's curiosity, he wished he could be home
again and in his attic room with his candle and his story book, or his
abundant and lively thoughts. But there was one other task before Miss
Mary. She could not forbear so little as a glance at the exterior of
the Sheriff's dwelling where the enemies of her home (as so she now must
fancy them) were trying to be happy without the company of the Campbells
of Keils. When they were in front of it every window shone across the
grass-plot, some of them open so that the sound of gaiety came clearly
to the woman and the boy. Miss Mary stood woebegone, suffused in tears.

"And there are my dear brothers at home yonder, their lee-lone, silent,
sitting in a parlour! Oh! it is shameful, it is shameful! And all for a
hasty word about a lass!"

Gilian before this curious sorrow was dumb. Silently he tried to lead
the little lady away from the place, but she would not go, and would not
be comforted. Then there came from the open windows the beginning of a
song. At the first note Gilian thrilled in every nerve.

"Fancy that now!" said Miss Mary, checking her tears. "No more than
a wean and here she must be singing at supper parties as brave as the
mother before her. It's a scandal! And it shows the bitterness of the
quarrel to have her here, for she was never here at supper before."

"But is she not fine?" said Gilian, with a passion in his utterance.

Nan it was, singing a Scots song, a song of sad and familiar mood, a
song of old loves, old summers, and into the darkness it came with a
sweetness