gaunt bodies and looked at her with such mournful eyes when she went through the croft in which they were eating the scanty grass.  The two old horses who did the ploughing and the harvesting had ribs that she could count, that felt sharp when she stroked their patient sides.  The cows lowed a great deal—­very plaintively and deep; the pigs squealed hungrily every time a pail clattered in the kitchen or steps passed their sty door.

One dreadful day they squealed all the time while Marcella’s little English mother lay on her couch in the window that looked over Lashnagar, and cried.  She had lain on this couch for nearly two years now, whiter and thinner every day.  Marcella adored her and used to kiss her white, transparent hands, and call her by the names of queens and goddesses in the legends she had read, trying to stretch her own ten years of experience to match her mother’s thirty-five so that she could be her friend.  And this day when Rose Lashcairn cried because the beasts were crying with hunger and there was no food for them, Marcella thought of Jeannie Deans and Coeur de Lion and Sir Galahad.  Buckling on her armour in the shape of an old coat made of the family plaid, and a Tam o’ Shanter, she went out to do battle for the helpless creatures who were hungry, and stop her mother’s tears.

It was a three-mile walk to the little town.  There was a corn factor’s shop there at which her father dealt.  She walked in proudly.  It was market day and the place was full of people.

“Andrew Lashcairn says ye’ll please to be sending up a sack of meal and a sack of corn the day,” she said calmly to the factor who looked at her between narrowing eyes.  The factor was a man imported to the district:  he had not the feudal habit of respect for decayed lordship.

“Indeed he does?  And why disna Andrew Lashcairn come tae dae his own begging?”

Marcella stared at him and her eyes flashed with indignation though her knees were trembling.

“He is not begging, Mr. Braid.  But the beasts are crying for food and he’s needin’ the corn the night.”

The people in the shop stopped talking about prices and listened greedily.  They knew what Marcella did not.

“Then ye’ll tell him tae go on needin’.  When he’s paid for the last sack, an’ the one afore that, he’ll be gettin’ more.”

“But of course he’ll pay,” she cried.  “My father is busy, and he can’t mind things always.  If you ask him, he’ll pay.”

The man laughed.

“He will, fine he will!  No, Mistress Marcella, ye can tell yer father not tae go sendin’ children beggin’ for credit whiles he hugs his bar’l.  The corn’s here safe enough when he chooses to pay for’t.”