On 2nd of July 1682 the boy had an errand from his mother, which must be kept private from all, the father included in the first of them.  Crossing the braes, he hears the clatter of a horse’s shoes, and claps down incontinent in a hag by the wayside.  And presently he spied his father come riding from one direction, and Curate Haddo walking from another; and Montroymont leaning down from the saddle, and Haddo getting on his toes (for he was a little, ruddy, bald-pated man, more like a dwarf), they greeted kindly, and came to a halt within two fathoms of the child.

‘Montroymont,’ the curate said, ’the deil’s in ’t but I’ll have to denunciate your leddy again.’

’Deil’s in ‘t indeed!’ says the laird.

‘Man! can ye no induce her to come to the kirk?’ pursues Haddo; ’or to a communion at the least of it?  For the conventicles, let be! and the same for yon solemn fule, M’Brair:  I can blink at them.  But she’s got to come to the kirk, Montroymont.’

‘Dinna speak of it,’ says the laird.  ‘I can do nothing with her.’

‘Couldn’t ye try the stick to her? it works wonders whiles,’ suggested Haddo.  ’No?  I’m wae to hear it.  And I suppose ye ken where you’re going?’

‘Fine!’ said Montroymont.  ’Fine do I ken where:  bankrup’cy and the Bass Rock!’

‘Praise to my bones that I never married!’ cried the curate.  ’Well, it’s a grievous thing to me to see an auld house dung down that was here before Flodden Field.  But naebody can say it was with my wish.’

‘No more they can, Haddo!’ says the laird.  ’A good friend ye’ve been to me, first and last.  I can give you that character with a clear conscience.’

Whereupon they separated, and Montroymont rode briskly down into the Dule Valley.  But of the curate Francis was not to be quit so easily.  He went on with his little, brisk steps to the corner of a dyke, and stopped and whistled and waved upon a lassie that was herding cattle there.  This Janet M’Clour was a big lass, being taller than the curate; and what made her look the more so, she was kilted very high.  It seemed for a while she would not come, and Francie heard her calling Haddo a ‘daft auld fule,’ and saw her running and dodging him among the whins and hags till he was fairly blown.  But at the last he gets a bottle from his plaid-neuk and holds it up to her; whereupon she came at once into a composition, and the pair sat, drinking of the bottle, and daffing and laughing together, on a mound of heather.  The boy had scarce heard of these vanities, or he might have been minded of a nymph and satyr, if anybody could have taken long-leggit Janet for a nymph.  But they seemed to be huge friends, he thought; and was the more surprised, when the curate had taken his leave, to see the lassie fling stones after him with screeches of laughter, and Haddo turn about and caper, and shake his staff at her, and laugh louder than herself.  A wonderful merry