ip that I own myself, in a cabin I have
fitted out for her, fine enough for a crowned queen, but not fine enough
for her--

"'Blair in Athol's mine lassie,
Fair Dunkeld is mine lassie,
St. Johnston's bower and Hunting Tower,
And a' that's mine is thine, lassie.'

Oh, man, but I have cause for my happiness. I have the world before
me, good work to do, good money to earn, and her love like a "perpetual
sun-shine to make life fair to me."

Then suddenly his voice changed.

"Ah, but my happiness is not complete. There are two things I want yet.
I want my father to come out with me, and I want you, too, my friend."

"And will your father not go? I heard that they had released him at last
from the prison in Scotland, whew they kept him since the year of the
break at Antrim. He's home again."

"Ay, he's home, and it's little cause he has to stay here. They have
put a new minister in his place. The Synod, the conscienceless villains,
declared it vacant. Castlereagh, through his satellite Black, has
corrupted them, too. He'll preach no more in the old meeting-house, nor
sit over his bodes in the old manse. He's at the Widow Maclure's now,
the woman whose husband was hanged. He'll not want his bit while I've
money in my pocket. But I'd like to bring him with me, to give him a
better home."

"And will he not go?"

"He will not. He says he's too old to go to a new land now; but you'll
help me to persuade him. I think, maybe, if you'd come with me that he'd
come, too. And you will come, won't you?"

Hope shook his head.

"Don't shake your head at me that way, James Hope. You don't know what
you're refusing. I can give you work to do out there, and money to earn,
and a fine house to live in. It's a good land, so it is; it's a land of
liberty. We've done with the tyrannies of this worn-out old world. A man
may speak his mind out there, and think his own thoughts and go his own
way. We doff our hats and make our bows to no man living, only to him
who shows himself by fine deeds to be our better. It's the land for you
and the land for me, and the land for every man that loves freedom. Will
you not come?"

They reached the door of the Maclures' house and entered. A bright fine
burned on the hearth. The Widow Maclure was busy spreading a white cloth
on the table. Her eldest girl, a child of twelve years old, stood near
at hand with a pile of wooden porridge bowls in her arms. The two other
chi