ks
must be stormed. Still Sweetheart had made no
motion to resist, except that, still seated on the
broad board of the swing, she had gradually pushed
herself back as far as she could go without losing
her foothold on the ground.

"She's afraid!--She is retreating! On--on!"

No, Hugh John, for once your military genius has
been at fault. For at the very moment when the
snowy walls were being scaled, Sweetheart suddenly
lifted her feet from the ground. The swing, pushed
back to the limit of its chains, glided smoothly
forward. One solidly shod boot-sole took Hugh John
full on the chest. Another "plunked" Sir Toady in a
locality which he held yet more tender, especially,
as now, before dinner. Both warriors shot backward
as if discharged from a petard, disappearing from
view down the slope into the big drifts at the
foot. Maid Margaret, who had not been touched at
all, but who had stood (as it were) in the very
middle of affairs, uttered one terrified yell and
bolted.

"Time!" cried the umpire, appearing in the
doorway.

The baffled champions entered first. While
changing, they had got ready at least twenty
complete explanations of their downfall.
Sweetheart, coming in a little late, sat down to
her sewing, and listened placidly with a faint,
sweet, far-away smile which seemed to say that
knitting, though an occupation despised by boys,
does not wholly obscure the intellect. But she did
not say a word.

Her brothers somehow found this attitude
excessively provoking.

* * * * *

Thus exercised in mind and body, and presently also
fortified by the mid-day meal, the company declared
its kind readiness to hear the rest of _The
Antiquary_. It was not _Rob Roy_, of course--but a
snowy day brought with it certain compensations. So
to the crackle of the wood fire and the click and
shift of the knitting needles, I began the final
tale from _The Antiquary_.

THE THIRD TALE FROM "THE ANTIQUARY"

I. THE EARL'S SECRET

ON the seashore not far from the mansion-house of Monkbarns stood the
little fisherman's cottage of Saunders Mucklebackit. Saunders it was who
had rigged the mast, by which Sir Arthur and his daughter were pulled to
the top of the cliffs on the night of the storm. His wife came every day
to the