ce--and here is a
guinea piece. Will you stand by the toss of the coin?"

"I will stand and fall by it," said Mr. Henry. "Heads, I go; shield, I
stay."

The coin was spun, and it fell shield. "So there is a lesson for Jacob,"
says the Master.

"We shall live to repent of this," says Mr. Henry, and flung out of the
hall.

As for Miss Alison, she caught up that piece of gold which had just sent
her lover to the wars, and flung it clean through the family shield in
the great painted window.

"If you loved me as well as I love you, you would have stayed," cried
she.

"'I could not love you, dear, so well, loved I not honour more,'" sang
the Master.

"_O!_" she cried, "you have no heart--I hope you may be killed!" and she
ran from the room, and in tears, to her own chamber.

It seems the Master turned to my lord with his most comical manner, and
says he, "This looks like a devil of a wife."

"I think you are a devil of a son to me," cried his father, "you that
have always been the favourite, to my shame be it spoken. Never a good
hour have I gotten of you since you were born; no, never one good hour,"
and repeated it again the third time. Whether it was the Master's
levity, or his insubordination, or Mr. Henry's word about the favourite
son, that had so much disturbed my lord, I do not know: but I incline to
think it was the last, for I have it by all accounts that Mr. Henry was
more made up to from that hour.

Altogether it was in pretty ill blood with his family that the Master
rode to the North; which was the more sorrowful for others to remember
when it seemed too late. By fear and favour he had scraped together near
upon a dozen men, principally tenants' sons; they were all pretty full
when they set forth, and rode up the hill by the old abbey, roaring and
singing, the white cockade in every hat. It was a desperate venture for
so small a company to cross the most of Scotland unsupported; and (what
made folk think so the more) even as that poor dozen was clattering up
the hill, a great ship of the King's navy, that could have brought them
under with a single boat, lay with her broad ensign streaming in the
bay. The next afternoon, having given the Master a fair start, it was
Mr. Henry's turn; and he rode off, all by himself, to offer his sword
and carry letters from his father to King George's Government. Miss
Alison was shut in her room, and did little but weep, till both were
gone; only she stitched the c