sing the tenants; as, indeed, no more he had,
except to spend the money. He was a little wild perhaps, the folk said;
but how much better was a natural, wild lad that would soon have settled
down, than a skinflint and a sneckdraw, sitting with his nose in an
account-book to persecute poor tenants! One trollop, who had had a child
to the Master, and by all accounts been very badly used, yet made
herself a kind of champion of his memory. She flung a stone one day at
Mr. Henry.

"Whaur's the bonny lad that trustit ye?" she cried.

Mr. Henry reined in his horse and looked upon her, the blood flowing
from his lip. "Ay, Jess?" says he. "You too? And yet ye should ken me
better." For it was he who had helped her with money.

The woman had another stone ready, which she made as if she would cast;
and he, to ward himself, threw up the hand that held his riding-rod.

"What, would ye beat a lassie, ye ugly----?" cries she, and ran away
screaming as though he had struck her.

Next day word went about the country like wildfire that Mr. Henry had
beaten Jessie Broun within an inch of her life. I give it as one
instance of how this snowball grew, and one calumny brought another;
until my poor patron was so perished in reputation that he began to keep
the house like my lord. All this while, you may be very sure, he uttered
no complaints at home; the very ground of the scandal was too sore a
matter to be handled; and Mr. Henry was very proud, and strangely
obstinate in silence. My old lord must have heard of it, by John Paul,
if by no one else; and he must at least have remarked the altered habits
of his son. Yet even he, it is probable, knew not how high the feeling
ran; and as for Miss Alison, she was ever the last person to hear news,
and the least interested when she heard them.

In the height of the ill-feeling (for it died away as it came, no man
could say why) there was an election forward in the town of St. Bride's,
which is the next to Durrisdeer, standing on the Water of Swift; some
grievance was fermenting, I forget what, if ever I heard: and it was
currently said there would be broken heads ere night, and that the
sheriff had sent as far as Dumfries for soldiers. My lord moved that Mr.
Henry should be present, assuring him it was necessary to appear, for
the credit of the house. "It will soon be reported," said he, "that we
do not take the lead in our own country."

"It is a strange lead that I can take," said Mr. Hen