"What d'yo' mean, sir-r-r?"

"Yo' know what I mean, lass," he replied sheepish and shuffling before
her queenly anger.

She looked him up and down, and down and up again.

"I'll niver speak to you agin, Mr. M'Adam," she cried; "not if it was
ever so--Nay, I'll walk home by myself, thank you. I'll ha' nowt to do
wi' you."

So the two must return to Kenmuir, one behind the other, like a lady and
her footman.

David's audacity had more than once already all but caused a rupture
between the pair. And the occurrence behind the hedge set the cap on his
impertinences. That was past enduring and Maggie by her bearing let him
know it.

David tolerated the girl's new attitude for exactly twelve minutes by
the kitchen clock. Then: "Sulk wi' me, indeed! I'll teach her!" and he
marched out of the door, "Niver to cross it agin, ma word!"

Afterward, however, he relented so far as to continue his visits as
before; but he made it clear that he only came to see the Master and
hear of Owd Bob's doings. On these occasions he loved best to sit on the
window-sill outside the kitchen, and talk and chaff with Tammas and the
men in the yard, feigning an uneasy bashfulness when reference made to
Bessie Bolstock. And after sitting thus for some time, he would half
turn, look over his shoulder, and remark in indifferent tones to the
girl within: "Oh, good-evenin'! I forgot yo', "--and then resume his
conversation. While the girl within, her face a little pinker, her
lips a little tighter, and her chin a little higher, would go about her
business, pretending neither to hear nor care.

The suspicions that M'Adam nourished dark designs against James Moore
were somewhat confirmed in that, on several occasions in the bitter
dusks of January afternoons, a little insidious figure was reported to
have been seen lurking among the farm-buildings of Kenmuir.

Once Sam'l Todd caught the little man fairly, skulking away in the
woodshed. Sam'l took him up bodily and carried him down the slope to the
Wastrel, shaking him gently as he went.

Across the stream he put him on his feet.

"If I catches yo' cadgerin' aroun' the farm agin, little mon," he
admonished, holding up a warning finger; "I'll tak' yo' and drap yo'
in t' Sheep-wash, I warn yo' fair. I'd ha' done it noo an' yo'd bin a
bigger and a younger mon. But theer! yo'm sic a scrappety bit. Noo, rin
whoam." And the little man slunk silently away.

For a time he appeared there no more. Then,