your house would soon be as intolerable to me as my ways are to your good
wife, and therefore it is better by far that before any words have passed
between you and me, and while we are as good friends as on the evening
when I returned, I should get out of this. I met an old friend today, one
of the lads who went with me from Glasgow to join the Earl of Mar at
Perth. He is well to do now, and trades in cattle, taking them in droves
down into England. For the sake of old times he has offered me
employment, and methinks it will suit me as well as any other."

"But you cannot surely be going as a drover, Malcolm!"

"Why not? The life is as good as any other. I would not sit down, after
these years of roving, to an indoor life. I must either do that or cross
the water again and take service abroad. I am only six and thirty yet,
and am good for another fifteen years of soldiering, and right gladly
would I go back if Leslie were again at the head of his regiment, but I
have been spoiled by him. He ever treated me as a companion and as a
friend rather than as a trooper in his regiment, and I should miss him
sorely did I enter any other service. Then, too, I would fain be here to
be ready to join him again if he sends for me or comes, and I should wish
to keep an eye always on his boy. You will continue to take charge of
him, won't you, Andrew? He is still a little strange, but he takes to
Elspeth, and will give little trouble when he once learns the language."

"I don't like it at all, Malcolm," the bailie said.

"No, Andrew, but you must feel it is best. I doubt not that ere this your
wife has told you her troubles concerning me."

As the bailie on the preceding night had listened to a long string of