but the grue (horror) maun mak w'y for the grace. I'm sure it was
sae whan I gied you yer whups, lass. I'll no say aboot some o' the
first o' ye, for at that time I didna ken sae weel what I was aboot,
an' was mair angert whiles nor there was ony occasion for--tuik my
beam to dang their motes. I hae been sair tribled aboot it, mony's
the time."

"Eh, mither!" said Nicie, shocked at the idea of her reproaching
herself about anything concerning her children, "I'm weel sure
there's no ane o' them wad think, no to say say, sic a thing."

"I daursay ye're richt there, lass. I think whiles a woman's bairns
are like the God they cam frae--aye ready to forgie her onything."

Ginevra went home with a good many things to think about.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE LORRIE MEADOW.

It was high time, according to agricultural economics, that Donal
Grant should be promoted a step in the ranks of labour. A youth
like him was fit for horses and their work, and looked idle in a
field with cattle. But Donal was not ambitious, at least in that
direction. He was more and more in love with books, and learning
and the music of thought and word; and he knew well that no one
doing a man's work upon a farm could have much time left for
study--certainly not a quarter of what the herd-boy could command.
Therefore, with his parents approval, he continued to fill the
humbler office, and receive the scantier wages belonging to it.

The day following their adventure on Glashgar, in the afternoon,
Nicie being in the grounds with her little mistress, proposed that
they should look whether they could see her brother down in the
meadow of which her mother had spoken. Ginevra willingly agreed,
and they took their way through the shrubbery to a certain tall
hedge which divided the grounds from a little grove of larches on
the slope of a steep bank descending to the Lorrie, on the other
side of which lay the meadow. It was a hawthorn hedge, very old,
and near the ground very thin, so that they easily found a place to
creep through. But they were no better on the other side, for the
larches hid the meadow. They went down through them, therefore, to
the bank of the little river--the largest tributary of the Daur from
the roots of Glashgar.

"There he is!" cried Nicie.

"I see him," responded Ginny, "--with his cows all about the
meadow."

Donal sat a little way from the river, reading.

"He's aye at 's buik!" said Nicie.

"I wonder wh