eight, in
kilts. These two looked as if they might be scions of the aristocracy,
while Dandie and the Wrig were fat little yokels of another sort. The
miniature castle must have been the work of several mornings, and was
worthy of the respectful but silent admiration with which we gazed
upon it; but as the last stone was placed in the tower, the master
builder looked up and spied our interested eyes peering at him over
the wall. We were properly abashed and ducked our heads discreetly at
once, but were reassured by hearing him run rapidly toward us,
calling, "Stop, if you please! Have you anything on just now,--are you
busy?"

We answered that we were quite at leisure.

"Then would you mind coming in to help us to play 'Sir Patrick Spens'?
There aren't enough of us to do it nicely."

This confidence was touching, and luckily it was not in the least
misplaced. Playing "Sir Patrick Spens" was exactly in our line, little
as he suspected it.

"Come and help?" I said. "Simply delighted! Do come, Fanny dear. How
can we get over the wall?"

"I'll show you the good broken place!" cried Sir Apple-Cheek; and
following his directions we scrambled through, while Rafe took off his
Highland bonnet ceremoniously and handed us down to earth.

"Hurrah! now it will be something like fun! Do you know 'Sir Patrick
Spens'?"

"Every word of it. Don't you want us to pass an examination before you
allow us in the game?"

"No," he answered gravely; "it's a great help, of course, to know it,
but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt
Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little." (Here
he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) "We've
done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are
trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is
the 'eldern knight,'--you remember him?"

"Certainly; he sat at the king's right knee."

"Yes, yes, that's the one! Then Rafe is Sir Patrick part of the time,
and I the other part, because everybody likes to be him; but there's
nobody left for the 'lords o' Noroway' or the sailors, and the Wrig is
the only maiden to sit on the shore, and she always forgets to comb
her hair and weep at the right time."

The forgetful and placid Wrig (I afterwards learned that this is a
Scots word for the youngest bird in the nest) was seated on the grass,
with her fat hands full of pink thyme and white wild woodruff. The sun