at
people were inclined to think that he had not all his wits, and they
always called him "The silly Lochmaben Harper."

Now Lochmaben is in Dumfriesshire, not very far from the English border,
and the old man sometimes took his harp and made long journeys into
England, playing at all the houses that he passed on the road.

Once when he returned from one of these journeys, he told everyone how
he had seen the English King, King Henry, who happened to be living at
that time at a castle in the north of England, and although he thought
the King a very fine-looking man indeed, he thought far more of a frisky
brown horse which his Majesty had been riding, and he had made up his
mind that some day it should be his.

All the people laughed loudly when they heard this, and looked at one
another and tapped their foreheads, and said, "Poor old man, his brain
is a little touched; he grows sillier, and sillier;" but the Harper only
smiled to himself, and went home to his cottage, where his wife was busy
making porridge for his supper.

"Wife," he said, setting down his harp in the corner of the room, "I am
going to steal the King of England's brown horse."

"Are you?" said his wife, and then she went on stirring the porridge.
She knew her husband better than the neighbours did, and she knew that
when he said a thing, he generally managed to do it.

The old man sat looking into the fire for a long time, and at last he
said, "I will need a horse with a foal, to help me: if I can find that,
I can do it."

"Tush!" said his wife, as she lifted the pan from the fire and poured
the boiling porridge carefully into two bowls; "if that is all that thou
needest, the brown horse is thine. Hast forgotten the old gray mare thou
left at home in the stable? Whilst thou wert gone, she bore a fine gray
foal."

"Ah!" said the old Harper, his eyes kindling. "Is she fond of her foal?"

"Fond of it, say you? I warrant bolts and bars would not keep her from
it. Ride thou away on the old mare, and I will keep the foal at home;
and I promise thee she will bring home the brown horse as straight as a
die, without thy aid, if thou desire it."

"Thou art a clever woman, Janet: thou thinkest of everything," said her
husband proudly, as she handed him his bowlful of porridge, and then sat
down to sup her own at the other side of the fire, chuckling to herself,
partly at her husband's words of praise, and partly at the simplicity of
the neighbours, wh