no can keep their eyes off it!' Weel, it lasted out her time, puir
thing! I cuttit a lock of it upon her corp that was lying there sae
cauld. I'll show it ye some of thir days if ye're good. But, as I was
sayin', my mither - "

On the death of the father there remained golden-haired Kirstie, who
took service with her distant kinsfolk, the Rutherfords, and black-a-
vised Gilbert, twenty years older, who farmed the Cauldstaneslap,
married, and begot four sons between 1773 and 1784, and a daughter, like
a postscript, in '97, the year of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent. It
seemed it was a tradition in the family to wind up with a belated girl.
In 1804, at the age of sixty, Gilbert met an end that might be called
heroic. He was due home from market any time from eight at night till
five in the morning, and in any condition from the quarrelsome to the
speechless, for he maintained to that age the goodly customs of the
Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a good bit of
money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. The laird had
shown his guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, there was an ill-
looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out of the
market long ere it was dusk and took the hill-road by Hermiston, where
it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One of the
country-side, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their guide, and
dear he paid for it! Of a sudden in the ford of the Broken Dykes, this
vermin clan fell on the laird, six to one, and him three parts asleep,
having drunk hard. But it is ill to catch an Elliott.
For a while, in the night and the black water that was deep as to his
saddle-girths, he wrought with his staff like a smith at his stithy, and
great was the sound of oaths and blows. With that the ambuscade was
burst, and he rode for home with a pistol-ball in him, three knife
wounds, the loss of his front teeth, a broken rib and bridle, and a