door--fleechin' like wi' him to tak' a sup o' soup. An' when I gaed
forrit to speak to him on the puir bit bed, she cam' by me like stour,
wi' the water happin' off her cheeks, like hail in a simmer
thunder-shoo'er."

"Puir bit lassockie!" muttered Rob Adair, who had three daughters of his
own at home, as he made another absent-minded and unsuccessful search
for his handkerchief. "There's a smurr o' rain beginnin' to fa', I
think," he said, apologetically.

"'An' ye're Sandy MacWhurr frae Drumquhat,' says the puir lad on the
bed. 'Are your sugar-plums as guid as ever?'

"What a quastion to speer on a dying bed, Saunders!" said Rob.

"'Deed, ye may say it. Weel, frae that he gaed on talkin' aboot hoo Fred
Robson an' him stole the hale o' the Drumquhat plooms ae back-end, an'
hoo they gat as far as the horse waterin'-place wi' them when the dogs
gat after them. He threepit that it was me that set the dogs on, but I
never did that, though I didna conter him. He said that Fred an' him
made for the seven-fit march dike, but hadna time to mak' ower it. So
there they had to sit on the tap o' a thorn-bush in the meadow on their
hunkers, wi' the dogs fair loupin' an' yowlin' to get haud o' them. Then
I cam' doon mysel' an' garred them turn every pooch inside oot. He
minded, too, that I was for hingin' them baith up by the heels, till
what they had etten followed what had been in their pooches. A' this he
telled juist as he did when he used to come ower to hae a bar wi' the
lassies, in the forenichts after he cam' hame frae the college the first
year. But the lad was laughin' a' the time in a way I didna like. It
wasna natural--something hard an' frae the teeth oot, as ye micht