certain
imperiousness that she ordered the boys away.

They went reluctantly, but they knew that because she was the daughter
of a magistrate and a laird, nothing serious would happen to her, while
they risked life and liberty every moment they stayed.

"Do you think I ran all the way from the bathing cove for nothing?" she
said. "Save yourselves, lads. Do as I bid you and at once."

They went, though it was not with the best grace in the world. Stair
wore a scowl on his handsome face as he slung his gun over his shoulder.
Only Fergus thanked her for having come to warn them.

"Hold your tongue," said Patsy, peremptorily, "get out of sight. Keep
yourselves safe. That is the best thanks, and all that I ask for from
you."

* * * * *

So it came about that fifteen minutes later, Lieutenant Everard of the
_Britomart_, disembarking with Captain Laurence of the Dragoons and the
Superintendent of Enlistments, Mr. Ebenezer McClure, came upon a picture
framed in the doorway of the Bothy of Blairmore. Patsy had spread Jean
Garland's scarlet sash to its broadest, and so had been able to let down
her skirt of blue linen till it came to almost her ankles, above which
the yellow cross-gartering of the sandals was diamonded in the Greek
fashion her Uncle Julian had taught her.

Patsy had found piles of unwashen dishes and spoons, for the boys of the
Glenanmays family depended for cleaning up upon uncertain,
semi-occasional visits, from one or other of their sisters. What they
wanted at the time they took out and washed in the pleasant tumble of
the hill brook which passed their door on its way down to meet the Abbey
Burn a little above Uncle Julian's house. The rest they left.

The two officers of His Majesty stood a moment too astonished for
speech. This was not at all what they had come out to find, nor what
their men had been posted all about the bothy to secure in case of an
attempt to escape.

Patsy nodded brightly to her visitors, and the officers saluted,
without, however, abandoning their gravity. The third man, a long, lean,
hook-nosed fellow with curly black hair plastered about his brow and
tied in a greasy fall of ringlets on his shoulders, frowned and growled.
He had understood at once that the game was up. If the authority had
been his, he would have had the sailors and marines scouring the
hillside and searching every rift in the rocks.

"May I ask you," said Captain Laurence,