and I mind once when I was a lad I was on my way home from the
kirk and a hare crossed my path. It's ill luck for a hare to
cross your path, and fine I proved it. I clean forgot it was the
Sabbath and louped the dyke after him. My kiltie caught on a
stone, and there I was hanging upside down. My father loosed me,
but my kiltie was torn and I had to go to bed without my supper
for breaking the Sabbath."

"Is the hole there yet?" asked Jean.

"Na, na;" said the Shepherd. "You didn't think your grandmother
was such a thriftless wifie as that! She mended the hole so that
you could never find where it had been."

He examined fold after fold carefully.

"There, now," he exclaimed at last, "if you want to see mending
that would make you proud to wear it, look at that."

Jean and Jock stuck their heads over his shoulder, and Alan
twisted himself nearly in two trying to see his own back.

"We have a plaid a good deal like this," said Alan, looking
closely at the pattern. "My mother's name was McGregor, but she
has relations named Campbell."

"Are you really a Scotch body, then?" cried Robin with new
interest in Alan. "I thought you were an English boy."

"I live in London," Alan answered, "but my mother's people are