wrapped in his cloak on the Castle terrace, might
well have astonished the crowd which in these
summer days comes from the four corners of the
world "to view fair Melrose aright."

It was not till the edge had worn off their first
enthusiasm, that it became possible to collect them
again in order to read "The Hold of a Highland
Robber," which makes Chapter Seventeenth of
_Waverley_ itself. And the reading so fired the
enthusiasm of Sweetheart that she asked for the
book to take to bed with her. The boys were more
practical, though equally enthusiastic.

"Wait till we get home," cried Hugh John, cracking
his fingers and thumbs. "I know a proper place for
Donald Bean Lean's cave."

"And I," said Sir Toady Lion, "will light a fire by
the pond and toss the embers into the water. It
will be jolly to hear 'em hiss, I tell you!"

"But what," asked Maid Margaret, "shall we do for
the cattle and sheep that were hanging by the
heels, when Edward went into Donald Bean Lean's
cave?"

"Why, we will hang _you_ up by the heels and cut
slices off you!" said Sir Toady, with frowning
truculence.

Whereat the little girl, a little solemnised, began
to edge away from the dangerous neighbourhood of
such a pair of young cannibals. Sweetheart
reproached her brothers for inventing calumnies
against their countrymen.

"Even the Highlanders were never so wicked," she
objected; "they did not eat one another."

"Well, anyway," retorted Sir Toady Lion, unabashed,
"Sawney Bean did. Perhaps he was a cousin of
Donald's, though in the history it says that he
came from East Lothian."

"Yes," cried Hugh John, "and in an old book written
in Latin it says (father read it to us) that one of
his little girls was too young to be executed with
the rest on the sands of Leith. So the King sent
her to be brought up by kind people, where she was
brought up without knowing anything of her father,
the cannibal, and her mother, the cannibaless--"

"Oh," cried Sweetheart, who knew what was coming,
putting up her hands over her ears, "please don't
tell that dreadful story all over again."

"Father read it out of a book--so there!" cried Sir
Toady, implacably, "go on, Hugh John!"

"And so when this girl was about as big as
Sweetheart, and, of course