riend
the Laird of Ellangowan had really turned against them.

During these five years the son, so strangely brought into the world on
the night of Mannering's visit, had been growing into the boldest and
brightest of boys. A wanderer by nature from his youth, he went
fearlessly into each nook and corner of his father's estates in search
of berries and flowers. He hunted every bog for rushes to weave
grenadiers' caps, and haled the hazelnuts from the lithe coppice boughs.

To Dominie Sampson, long since released from his village school, the
difficult task was committed of accompanying, restraining, and guiding
this daring spirit and active body. Shy, uncouth, awkward, with the
memory of his failure in the pulpit always upon him, the Dominie was
indeed quite able to instruct his pupil in the beginnings of learning,
but it proved quite out of his power to control the pair of twinkling
legs belonging to Master Harry Bertram. Once was the Dominie chased by a
cross-grained cow. Once he fell into the brook at the stepping-stones,
and once he was bogged in his middle in trying to gather water-lilies
for the young Laird. The village matrons who relieved Dominie Sampson
on this last occasion, declared that the Laird might just as well "trust
the bairn to the care o' a tatie-bogle!"[2] But the good tutor, nothing
daunted, continued grave and calm through all, only exclaiming, after
each fresh misfortune, the single word "Prodeegious!"

Often, too, Harry Bertram sought out Meg Merrilies at Derncleugh, where
he played his pranks among the gipsies as fearlessly as within the walls
of Ellangowan itself. Meanwhile the war between that active magistrate
Godfrey Bertram and the gipsies grew ever sharper. The Laird was
resolved to root them out, in order to stand well with his brother
magistrates. So the gipsies sullenly watched while the ground officer
chalked their doors in token that they must "flit" at the next term.

At last the fatal day arrived. A strong force of officers summoned the
gipsies to quit their houses, and when they did not obey, the sheriff's
men broke down the doors and pulled the roofs off the poor huts of
Derncleugh.

Godfrey Bertram, who was really a kindly man, had gone away for the day
to avoid the sight, leaving the business to the chief exciseman of the
neighbourhood,--one Frank Kennedy, a bold, roistering blade, who knew no
fear, and had no qualms whatever about ridding the neighbourhood of a
gang of "so