w me, Mrs. Birnie. You don't remember me, but I came here
one day before with James Hope."

"I mind you rightly, now," she said. "Come in and welcome, but if it's
my Johnny you're wanting to see, he's abroad the day."

"I won't disturb you," said Neal.

"You'll come in. You'll no be disturbing me. There's time enough for me
to do what I was doing when the wean called me."

Neal entered the house and sat down.

"You'll be wanting a bite to eat," said Mrs. Birnie. "It's little I have
to set for you. The wee bit of meat we had I cooked for him to take with
him. It's no much Jinny and I will be wanting while he's awa from us.
Ay, and it's no much Jinny and I will get if he doesna come back to us."

"Where has he gone?" said Neal.

"He's gone to the turn-out," she said, "to the turn-out that's to be the
morrow. It's more goes to the like, I'm thinking, than comes back again.
He's taken the pike with him that lay in the thatch over our bed this
year and more. But the will of the Lord be done."

"May God bring him safe home to you," said Neal.

"Ay, for God can do it, God can do it. I take no shame to tell you,
young as you are, that I was just beseeching the Lord to do that very
thing the now while you were standing at the door with Jinny. But the
Lord's ways are not our ways."

She set a plate of oatcake and a jug of buttermilk on the table before
Neal, and bade him eat. When he had finished, he sat and talked with her
awhile, trying to cheer her. But she was not a woman to whom it was easy
to speak comfortable platitudes. She knew the risks her husband ran--the
risk of battle, and the worse risks which would follow defeat. Neal rose
at last and bid her farewell.

"When you are saying a prayer for your husband," he said, "say one for
me; I'll be along with him. I'm going to fight, too."

"And will you be for the turn-out, then, with the rest of them? Ay,
I'll say a prayer for you, And--and, young man, will you mind this? When
you're killing with your pike and your gun, even if it's a yeo that's
forninst you, gie a thought to the woman that's waiting at home for him,
and, maybe, praying. What would hinder her to pray for her husband even
if he's a yeoman itself?"

It was seven o'clock when Neal reached Aeneas Moylin's house, after
climbing the steep lane that led to Donegore Hill. He found six men
seated in the kitchen--Donald Ward, Felix Matier, James Bigger, Moylin,
and two others whom he did not know.

"It