second step it often binds you.--Say what you think, Lysbet."

"Neil is to my mind, when the time comes. But yet the child knows not
perfectly her Heidelberg. And there is more: she must learn to help her
mother about the house before she can manage a house of her own. So in
time, I say, it would be a good thing. We have been long good friends."

[Illustration: Knitting]

"We hae been friends for four generations, and we may safely tie the
knot tighter now. There are wise folk that say the Dutch and the Lowland
Scotch are of the same stock, and a vera gude stock it is,--the women o'
baith being fair as lilies and thrifty as bees, and the men just a
wonder o' every thing wise and weel-spoken o'. For-bye, baith o'
us--Scotch and Dutch--are strict Protestors. The Lady o' Rome never
threw dust in our een, and neither o' us would put our noses to the
ground for either powers spiritual or powers temporal. When I think o'
our John Knox"--

"First came Erasmus, Elder."

"Surely. Well, well, it was about wedding and housekeeping I came to
speak, and we'll hae it oot. The land between this place and my place,
on the river-side, is your land, Joris. Give it to Katherine, and I will
build the young things a house; and the furnishing and plenishing we'll
share between us."

"There is more to a wedding than house and land, Elder."

"Vera true, madam. There's the income to meet the outgo. Neil has a good