a ring which he said he would redeem when the time came.  She showed me the ring, which was very like the ones upon my bed curtain; but she said that this one was virgin gold.  I asked her what the knight would do if he met the Barbary rover, and she told me that he would sweep his head from his shoulders.  What they could all see in her was more than I could think.  And then she told me that she had been followed on her way to West Inch by a disguised prince.  I asked her how she knew it was a prince, and she said by his disguise.  Another day she said that her father was preparing a riddle, and that when it was ready it would be put in the papers, and anyone who guessed it would have half his fortune and his daughter.  I said that I was good at riddles, and that she must send it to me when it was ready.  She said it would be in the Berwick Gazette, and wanted to know what I would do with her when I won her.  I said I would sell her by public roup for what she would fetch; but she would tell no more stories that evening, for she was very techy about some things.

Jim Horscroft was away when Cousin Edie was with us, but he came back the very week she went; and I mind how surprised I was that he should ask any questions or take any interest in a mere lassie.  He asked me if she were pretty; and when I said I hadn’t noticed, he laughed and called me a mole, and said my eyes would be opened some day.  But very soon he came to be interested in something else, and I never gave Edie another thought until one day she just took my life in her hands and twisted it as I could twist this quill.

That was in 1813, after I had left school, when I was already eighteen years of age, with a good forty hairs on my upper lip and every hope of more.  I had changed since I left school, and was not so keen on games as I had been, but found myself instead lying about on the sunny side of the braes, with my own lips parted and my eyes staring just the same as Cousin Edie’s used to do.  It had satisfied me and filled my whole life that I could run faster and jump higher than my neighbour; but now all that seemed such a little thing, and I yearned, and yearned, and looked up at the big arching sky, and down at the flat blue sea, and felt that there was something wanting, but could never lay my tongue to what that something was.  And I became quick of temper too, for my nerves seemed all of a fret, and when my mother would ask me what ailed me, or my father would speak of my turning my hand to work, I would break into such sharp bitter answers as I have often grieved over since.  Ah! a man may have more than one wife, and more than one child, and more than one friend; but he can never have but the one mother, so let him cherish her while he may.