f a late fraternal combat much
in the manner of Froissart.

It is to be noted that thus far both Sweetheart and
Maid Margaret disdained the female parts, the
latter even going the length of saying that she
preferred Celie Stubbs, the Squire's daughter at
Waverley-Honour, to Rose Bradwardine. On being
asked for an explanation of this heresy, she said,
"Well, at any rate, Celie Stubbs got a new hat to
come to church in!"

* * * * *

And though I read the "Repentance and a
Reconciliation" chapter, which makes number Twelve
of _Waverley_, to the combatants, I was conscious
that I must hasten on to scenes more exciting if I
meant to retain the attention of my small but
exacting audience. Furthermore, it was beginning to
rain. So, hurriedly breaking off the tale, we drove
back to Melrose across the green holms of St.
Boswells.

It was after the hour of tea, and the crowd of
visitors had ebbed away from the precincts of the
Abbey before the tale was resumed. A flat "throuch"
stone sustained the narrator, while the four
disposed themselves on the sunny grass, in the
various attitudes of severe inattention which youth
assumes when listening to a story. Sweetheart pored
into the depths of a buttercup. Hugh John scratched
the freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail
till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a
"pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it
cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret,
her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking
upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy
like that of a story. Only, she was too young to
mind letting the tale-teller know it. That made the
difference.

Above our heads the beautiful ruin mounted, now all
red gold in the lights, and purple in the shadows,
while round and round, and through and through,
from highest tower to lowest arch, the swifts
shrieked and swooped.

THE SECOND TALE FROM "WAVERLEY"

I. THE CATTLE-LIFTING

NEXT morning (I continued, looking up for inspiration to the pinnacles
of Melrose, cut against the clear sky of evening, as sharply as when
"John Morow, master mason," looked upon his finished work and found it
very good)--next morning, as Captain Edward Waverley was setting out for
his morning walk, he found the castle of Bradwardine