nities in the beginning of the Bible, and if I were
twenty years younger, I should ask you myself!"

"Oh," said Patsy, "that would be splendid. You are far the nicest man
and the most interesting I ever talked to. Don't ask me, for I should
say 'yes' in a minute."

* * * * *

Usually Patsy Ferris and her father had not much to say to one another.

"Good morning, daughter!" quoth Adam, coming in from his early
inspection; "whither away with such skip-jack grace, habited in yellow
and black like a wasp?"

"I have done my work, father," Patsy would answer. "I promised to go
help Jean at Glenanmays. The lads are all in the heather and the maids
have to do the heavy work of the field."

"But not you--I cannot have you handling the hoe and rake like a field
worker!"

"No, no, father; Jean is always indoors or at the dairy."

Adam Ferris looked thoughtful and his dark brows drew together. He
detested the press-gang and all it meant to the young men of the parish.

"I could send over a man or two, but my grieve or I myself would require
to accompany them for protection against seizure."

"No need," said his daughter, hastily. "Diarmid would not wish to draw
you into his sons' quarrels and, I think, Stair's band ran a big cargo
last night from the Burnfoot Bay. There were twenty preventive men
there, they say. Yet they stood aside and let the pack horses go by like
men in a dream!"

Adam grew a little paler. He did not like this open defiance of the
forces of law and order.

"How was that?" he demanded, "where was the military?"

"There were two hundred lads, all masked and all armed, a hundred pack
horses and another hundred to ride upon. What could twenty customs men
do with the like of these? Stair Garland left enough good lads to herd
them close under the cliff till the _Good Intent_ had her anchor up and
the caravan was out of all reach of danger."

This was by far the most serious news Adam Ferris had received for a
long time, but there was worse still to come.

"Uncle Julian says I ought to tell you, father," Patsy began with quite
unusual gravity, "that when the press-gang went to the Bothy of
Blairmore to take the lads of Glenanmays, they found me. I could run
much faster than Jean, so I got there first."

Her father grew grey under the olive of his skin. "The men were not
insolent?" he asked, for he knew the manners and customs of his
Majesty's press in lonely shieling