blessed blue een!'

David whistled his perplexity. 'The Yerl,' said he, 'doth he
ken?'

'I trow not! He thinks me at Tantallon, watching for the raid
the Mackays are threatening--little guessing the bird would be
flown.'

'How cam' ye to guess that same, which was, so far as I know,
only decided two days syne?'

'Our pursuivant was to bear a letter to the King, and I garred
him let me bear him company as one of his grooms, so that I
might delight mine eyes with the sight of her.'

David laughed. His time was not come, and this love and
admiration for his young cousin was absurd in his eyes. 'For a
young bit lassie,' he said; 'gin it had been a knight! But what
will your father say to mine?'

'I will write to him when I am well over the Border,' said
Geordie, 'and gin he kens that your father had no hand in it he
will deem no ill-will. Nor could he harm you if he did.'

David did not feel entirely satisfied, on one side of his mind
as to his own loyalty to his father, or Geordie's to 'the Yerl,'
and yet there was something diverting to the enterprising mind
in the stolen expedition; and the fellow-feeling which results
in honour to contemporaries made him promise not to betray the