they favour is bold and buxom, and might have the love of twenty,
though he is suing for theirs. Believe an old man, woman walk more
by what others think than by what they think themselves, and when
she asks for the boldest man in Perth whom can she hear named but
Harry Burn-the-wind? The best armourer that ever fashioned weapon
on anvil? Why, Harry Smith again. The tightest dancer at the maypole?
Why, the lusty smith. The gayest troller of ballads? Why, who but
Harry Gow? The best wrestler, sword and buckler player, the king of
the weapon shawing, the breaker of mad horses, the tamer of wild
Highlandmen? Evermore it is thee--thee--no one but thee. And
shall Catharine prefer yonder slip of a Highland boy to thee? Pshaw!
she might as well make a steel gauntlet out of kid's leather. I
tell thee, Conachar is nothing to her, but so far as she would fain
prevent the devil having his due of him, as of other Highlandmen.
God bless her, poor thing, she would bring all mankind to better
thoughts if she could."

"In which she will fail to a certainty," said the smith, who, as
the reader may have noticed, had no goodwill to the Highland race.
"I will wager on Old Nick, of whom I should know something, he being
indeed a worker in the same element with myself, against Catharine
on that debate: the devil will have the tartan, that is sure enough."

"Ay, but Catharine," replied the glover, "hath a second thou knowest
little of: Father Clement has taken the young reiver in hand, and
he fears a hundred devils as little as I do a flock of geese."

"Father Clement!" said the smith. "You are always making some new
saint in this godly city of St. Johnston. Pray, who, for a devil's
drubber, may he be? One of your hermits that is trained for the