“Let me look at ye, Maister Ralph Peden.  Whaur gat ye the ‘Ralph’?  That’s nae westland Whig name.  Aye, aye, I mind—­what’s comin’ o’ my memory?  Yer grandfaither was auld Ralph Gilchrist; but ye dinna tak’ after the Gilchrists—­na, na, there was no ane o’ them weel faured—­muckle moo’d [large-mouthed] Gilchrists they ca’ed them.  It’ll be your faither that you favour.”

And she turned him about for inspection with her hand.

“Grandmother—­” began Winsome, anxious lest she should say something to offend the guest of the house.  But the lady did not heed her gentle monition.

“Was’t you that ran awa’ frae a bonny lass yestreen?” she queried, sudden as a flash of summer lightning.

It was now the turn of both the younger folk to blush.  Winsome reddened with vexation at the thought that he should think that she had seen him run and gone about telling of it.  Ralph grew redder and redder, and remained speechless.  He did not think of anything at all.

“I am fond of exercise,” he said falteringly.

The gay old lady rippled into a delicious silver stream of laughter, a little thin, but charmingly provocative.  Winsome did not join, but she looked up imploringly at her grandmother, leaning her head back till her tresses swept the ground.

When Mistress Skirving recovered herself,

“Exerceese, quo’ he, heard ye ever the like o’ that?  In their young days lads o’ speerit took their exerceese in comin’ to see a bonny lass—­juist as I was sayin’ to Winifred yestreen nae faurer gane.  Hoot awa’, twa young folk!  The simmer days are no lang.  Waes me, but I had my share o’ them!  Tak’ them while they shine, bankside an’ burnside an’ the bonny heather.  Aince they bloomed for Ailie Gordon.  Once she gaed hand in hand alang the braes, where noo she’ll gang nae mair.  Awa’ wi’ ye, ye’re young an’ honest.  Twa auld cankered carles are no fit company for twa young folks like you.  Awa’ wi’ ye; dinna be strange wi’ his mither’s bairn, say I—­an’ the guid man hae’s spoken for the daddy o’ him.”

Thus was Ralph Peden made free of the Big Hoose of Craig Ronald.

CHAPTER VIII.

The minister’s man arms EOR Conquest.

Saunders Mowdiewort, minister’s man and grave-digger, was going a sweethearting.  He took off slowly the leathern “breeks” of his craft, sloughing them as an adder casts his skin.  They collapsed upon the floor with a hideous suggestion of distorted human limbs, as Saunders went about his further preparations.  Saunders was a great, soft-bodied, fair man, of the chuby flaxen type so rare in Scotland—­the type which looks at home nowhere but along the south coast of England.  Saunders was about thirty-five.  He was a widower in search of a wife, and made no secret of his devotion to Margaret Kissock, the “lass” of the farm town of Craig Ronald.