s he had faced or might be called upon to face, they
were as nothing to the hate and opprobrium of the whole body of one's
own people.

CHAPTER XXXIII

PATSY RAISES THE COUNTRY

With three Galloway ponies and the contagion of her own enthusiasm Patsy
undertook to arouse the country. She would save Stair and Julian by
raising the siege of the Bothy on the Wild of Blairmore. She called upon
her father at the gloomy house of Cairn Ferris and explained to him what
she meant to do. She would not remain there in the meanwhile, but if he
would lend her a pony or two, either from his stable or from among those
running wild on the moors, she would not compromise him in any way.

"Whom, then, did she mean to compromise?" Her father put the question
patiently.

Oh, Kennedy McClure was helping her, and Frank Airie, the Poor Scholar,
and the Glenanmays lads--all the Stair Garland band, in fact. Yes, Miss
Aline and the Austrian hunter were safe at Ladykirk. She could not have
her mixed up in such a business, and Heinrich Wolf would look after her.
Adam Ferris listened and nodded his head.

"I am a barn-door fowl that has hatched out a sparrow-hawk," he said
meekly. "Do not pyke your father's eyes out, chicken!"

And with this paternal benediction Patsy went forth on her errand.
Stair's Honeypot was at the door. Fergus Garland had brought him,
offering at the same time to steal Derry Down from the Castle Raincy
meadows. But this Patsy refused. She was not feeling particularly well
affected towards Louis Raincy at that moment. Louis, as it were, had
outlived his popularity.

Then began a great time. As flame after flame of lambent fire plays over
the southern sky some eve of summer lightning, so Patsy came, and
flashed, and passed. Hearts waited expectant before her, grew angry and
determined as they listened (not the young men only) to the tale of her
wrongs, also of Stair Garland's courage and Julian Wemyss's duel. She
passed and left armed men with a definite rendezvous in her wake. Still
keeping high up upon the pony tracks of the moors, she passed eastwards
to the Cree, crossed it, and with Godfrey McCulloch to aid her, she
carried the fiery cross along the shore-side of Solway to the great arch
of the Needle's Eye, which is at Douglasha', in the parish of Colvend.
Here she turned, for she was frightened at what might be going on during
her absence in the dim region of the flowes and flooded marshes called
the Wi