o the
Crosshouses past the tanned women standing with their hands rolled up
in their aprons, and up to Jean Clerk's door. He rapped loudly with his
rattan. He rapped so loudly that the inmates knew this was no common
messenger, and instead of crying out their invitation they came together
and opened the door. The faces of the sisters grew rosy red at the sight
of the man and the boy before him.

"Come away in, Captain," said Jean, assuming an air of briskness the
confusion of her face belied. "Come away in, I am proud to see you at my
door."

The Paymaster stepped in, still gripping the boy by the shoulder, but
refused to sit down. He spoke very short and dry in his best travelled
English.

"Did you lock up the Ladyfield house as I told you?" he asked.

"I did, that!" said Jean Clerk, lifting her brattie and preparing to
weep, "and it'll be the last time I'll ever be inside its hospitable
door."

"And you gave the key to Cameron the shepherd?"

"I did," said Jean, wondering what was to come next.

The Paymaster changed his look and his accent, and spoke again with
something of a pawky humour that those who knew him best were well aware
was a sign that his temper was at its worst.

"Ay," said he, "and you forgot about the boy. What's to be done with
him? I suppose you would leave him to rout with the kye he was bred
among, or haunt the rocks with the sheep. I was thinking myself coming
down the road there, and this little fellow with me without a friend in
the world, that the sky is a damp ceiling sometimes, and the grass of
the field a poor meal for a boy's stomach. Eh! what say you, Mistress
Clerk?" And the old soldier heaved a thumbful of snuff from his
waistcoat pocket.

"The boy's no kith nor kin of mine," said Jean Clerk, "except a very
far-out cousin's son." She turned her face away from both of them and
pretended to be very busy folding up her plaid, which, as is well known,
can only be done neatly with the aid of the teeth and thus demands some
concealment of the face. The sister passed behind the Paymaster and the
boy and startled the latter with a sly squeeze of the wrist as she did
so.

"Do you tell me, my good woman," demanded the Paymaster, "that you would
set him out on the road homeless on so poor an excuse as that? Far-out
cousin here or far-out cousin there, he has no kin closer than yourself
between the two stones of the parish. Where's your Hielan' heart,
woman?"

"There's nothing wron