ly below in case of children to be baptized.

Patsy stood on the stone, all trodden smooth by the restless feet of the
hill lambs which in spring came from the most distant parts of the moor
to gambol there. She could look both up and down the water, but for a
while she saw nothing of Stair.

But the five minutes were not up, when, from a thick tuft of broom, she
heard the call of the whin-chat, like a tiny hammer ringing on hard
stone. The sound came from up the water and Patsy moved towards it,
stepping deftly from stone to stone in the bed of the stream.

"Stair," she said softly, "where are you, Stair?" A full swathe of broom
moved itself aside, and she could see Stair Garland lying in a rocky
niche which he had prepared long before, in case of such a very probable
emergency as the officers of the excise coming after him.

The barrel of his long gun looked over his shoulder.

"Go on, Patsy," he said, "walk on up the burn as if you had seen nothing
and I shall be with you in a moment."

She had reached a little knoll, crowned with alder bushes, when she
found him entering from the opposite side. Sitting down, she told him of
the Duke's coming to Abbey Burnfoot, and of the two gentlemen who were
with him, Captain Laurence and Lord Wargrove.

"Ah," said Stair, "so it is for that we have a full squadron of dragoons
camped in our barns at Glenanmays, the stable emptied of our own horses
to make room for those of the dragoons, and the whole house turned
upside down. I thought it was too big a force to be sent after the three
of us."

"Fergus and Agnew are still away, then?" queried Patsy, sure that they
were.

Stair grinned.

"They are in the heather, like myself," he chuckled, "but neither of
them has such a choice of hidie-holes as I have. I can hide better and
lie closer, besides keeping a watch on the farm and on you, Miss Patsy,
with the soldiers all about within the shot of a gun."

"Can you bring Jean to me, Stair?" said Patsy, "it will be hard, I know,
with all those men on the watch at Glenanmays."

Stair flushed a little with the joy of a difficult commission. He
whistled shrilly three times, and then sat quite still listening. Then
he whistled thrice more and the echoes had hardly died away before the
wise, towsy head of a rough collie with the big, brown eyes of the
genuine Galloway sheep-dog peered out of the bracken and long grass of
the burnside. He came silently and expectantly to his master,