on the burn,
attending to charities, settling disputes--it's not right. The poor
child has a headache all the time, for it's a man's work she's doing.
Women are for better things. A woman should save her vitality."

"For what?" asked his father.

"For wifehood and motherhood," Danvers responded.

It sounded like a leaf from Pitcairn's book, but while his whole talk
was disrespectful to us as older men, it had a rare manly quality fine
to see. In the very midst of it Nancy was with us again, and, minding
Danvers Carmichael no more than she did the wooden benches, came over
to me.

"I'm going to see the Duke of Borthwicke," said she.

"Is it your intention," I inquired, "to send out scouts for his grace
that ye may interview him? I understand him to be a peripatetic body,
who travels a great deal in furtherance of his nefarious schemes. He
may not even be in Scotland."

"He is in Edinburgh at the moment," she answered, "at the 'Sign of the
Blue Thistle.' He has with him his secretary, Donovan; his valet, and
two serving-men. They have their lodgment in four rooms on the second
floor; he is bid to the ball at the Duchess of Gordon's to-night and at
eleven to-morrow leaves in his private coach for the Highlands."

"The Government should employ you, Nancy Stair," Sandy broke in with a
laugh. "The country is just now needing people who can pick up such
accurate information."

"It was no great matter to do," she explained. "When people whose lives
are hanging on the duke's acts have been watching him for days they are
like to know his movements. I will go to-night, before the ball; and if
you'll excuse me now, I'll try to get some rest," and with no further
word she left us.

She had scarce turned the box-hedge when Danvers Carmichael gave us a
taste of his nature and had his say with us in language free and
skirting the profane.

"Suppose," he began, "suppose she goes to see the duke, and suppose,
which is far from likely, that she is able to obtain an audience with
him, what is there for her to say? She can not very well just call the
man a scoundrel! And as for the Lapraik affair, if he has the rascality
to do the act, it's not likely that he will flinch at the naming of
it."

Getting no answer to this from either of us he went on at white heat,
stating in violent and unshaded English the wrong of allowing a girl,
little more than a child, to visit a man of the duke's repute, and
giving it as his opinion tha