over knolls carefully planed down--and so back and back to
the shelter of dark fir woods. Twelve hundred acres--and not his! Not a
Raincy stone upon it, nor had been for four hundred years.

There were two houses on this twelve hundred acres of good land. First
came Cairn Ferris, at the head of the glen of the Abbey Water. Close to
the road that, under the lee of the big pines, a plain, douce,
much-ivied house; and down in a nook by the sea, Abbey Burnfoot, called
"The Abbey," a newer and brighter place, set like a jewel on the very
edge of the sea, the white sand in front and the blue sweep of the bay
widening out on either hand. Horrible--oh, most horrible! Not his--nor
ever would be!

This was the blot which blackened all the rest--the property of the
Ferrises of Cairn Ferris, of Adam, chief of the name at the top of the
Glen, and of his brother Julian--he who had cursed the noble
scythe-sweep of the Abbey Bay, which all ought to have been untouched
Raincy property, with crow-stepped gables and beflowered verandahs.

"They stole it, boy, stole it!" muttered old Earl Raincy, setting a
shaking hand on the boy's shoulder, "four hundred years ago they stole
it. They came with the Stuart king who had nothing to do in the Free
Province, and we stood for the Douglases, as was our duty. Your ancestor
and mine was killed at Arkinholm with three earls and twenty barons, he
not the least noble!"

He paused a moment to control his senile anger and then went quavering
on.

"This Ferris was a mercenary--a fighter for his own hand, and they gave
him _this_ while we were exiled. And they have held it ever since--the
pick of our heritage--the jewel in the lotus. Often we have asked it
back--often taken it. But because they married into the Fife
Wemysses--yes, even this last of them, they have always retaken and held
it, to our despite!"

The boy on the stile, sprawling and thinking of something else (for he
had heard all this fifty times before), yawned.

"Well, there's plenty more--why worry, grandfather?" he said, fanning
himself with the blue velvet college cap that had a bright gold badge in
front.

The old man started as if stung. He frowned and blinked like an angry
bald eagle.

"There speaks the common wash of Whiggish blood. MacBryde will out!--No
Raincy would thus have sold his birthright for a mess of pottage."

The eyes of the lad were still indolent, but also somewhat impudent in
schoolboy fashion, as he answ