disguises and surprises and bounty and plots and rescues and such
like, something must be pardoned to one whose experience had already
been so greatly out of the common, and whose nature was far too
childlike and poetic, and developed in far too simple a surrounding of
labour and success, difficulty and conquest, danger and deliverance,
not to have more than the usual amount of what is called the romantic
in its composition.

The buzzing of his bee was for the present interrupted by the return
of Blue Peter with his wife. She threw her arms round Malcolm's
neck, and burst into tears.

"Hoots, my woman!" said her husband, "what are ye greitin' at?"

"Eh, Peter!" she answered, "I canna help it. It's jist like a deith.
He's gauin' to lea' us a', an' gang hame till 's ain, an' I canna
bide 'at he sud grow strange-like to hiz 'at ha'e kenned him sae
lang."

"It'll be an ill day," returned Malcolm, "whan I grow strange to
ony freen'. I'll ha'e to gang far down the laich (low) ro'd afore
that be poassible. I mayna aye be able to du jist what ye wad like;
but lippen ye to me: I s' be fair to ye. An' noo I want Blue Peter
to gang wi' me, an' help me to what I ha'e to du--gien ye ha'e
nae objection to lat him."

"Na, nane ha'e I. I wad gang mysel' gien I cud be ony use," answered
Mrs Mair; "but women are i' the gait whiles."

"Weel, I'll no even say thank ye; I'll be awin' ye that as weel's