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shock the like of that one.’
    And he gathered up his men, and in a while they mounted their horses that were waiting in the farmyard and clattered away.
    Nobody moved until the last dwindling hoof – beats had quite died into the distance. Then a kind of sigh ran through the little parlour. And I mind a whaup rose crying from the moors behind the house.
    And oh, but the grief was on me, for the drummer laddie, and for my own loss of Alan that left me like a stray dog with no heel to follow. My head felt stiff on my shoulders when I forced it round to look at him. He was an odd pearly white, and he was looking at Grandfather. But in a little, as though my looking had reached him like a touch, he turned and answered it with a long cool stare.
    Feeling like somebody much older than myself, I said, ‘So we’ll not be hanging. Not this time, anyway. Bu you be awfu’ careful another time, because I’d like to kill you, Alan Armstrong; I’d like to kill you fine.’
    I do not know what I meant by it; it was just a bairn’s threat, I suppose; though it did not feel like one.
    Alan laughed at it. He stood with his head tipped back, and laughed. ‘Thanks for the warning, my mannie! I’ll mind it – another time!’ And that was certainly no bairn’s threat.
    ‘Now may God forgive you your wicked words, you ungrateful –’ my Aunt Margaret began. But I heard her bitter voice behind me, for I had already turned and was blundering from the room.
    I made for the stable and flung myself face down in the straw of old Janot’s stall, and bided there a long time, smelling the comforting smell of horses, and hearing their stir and rustle and soft puffing breaths. I wanted no more to do with men and the world of men ever again.
    The pull of two loyalties within me was over and done with, and there was some relief in that. I knew now that I was like Montrose: that I was no Covenanter nor ever could be.
    But oh, the grief was on me sore.

3
My Lady Jean
    A FEW DAYS later, Grandfather bade me saddle Janot for him, and rode into Lochinloch market.
    He got home in a silent mood, and in silence ate the supper that Aunt Margaret had ready for him in the parlour. Dinner in the kitchen with the farmhands, supper in the parlour with just the family; that’s the way of it in the big farms and small manor houses of Lowland Scotland. And when he had done, and we had just left the table, Alan and I careful never to catch each other’s glance, as we had been ever since the morning that the soldiers came, he called for his clay pipe, and when Aunt Margaret had filled and lit and given it to him, he sat back in his chair and took a long steady pull, and puffed out a blue smoke-garland round his head. (I never knew any man to make more smoke with his pipe than my grandfather did.) And out of the midst of the smoke cloud, said he, ‘I was talking wi’ Dundonel’s factor at the market.’
    ‘It would not be the first time,’ said Aunt Margaret, sitting herself down at her spinning-wheel beside the fire.
    ‘About Hugh,’ said Grandfather.
    The sound of my own name seemed to give me a small jab in my belly, and I stopped playing with Jess’s ears, she having her head heavy and warm on my knee; and we all looked at Grandfather.
    And Grandfather took another pull at his pipe and spoke out of a fresh cloud of smoke. ‘I was telling himthat I’d a daughter’s son here that I was wishing to find a place in the world for, seeing that I had already a son’s son to follow after me here at Wauprigg. And he was telling me that they had room for another laddie in the stables, over to Place of Paisley.’
    My Aunt Margaret’s foot checked on the treadle, and the thrum of the wheel fell silent. ‘And you’ve struck a bargain with him to take Hugh?’
    ‘Aye,’ said Grandfather.
    ‘After all the to-do you made about his getting his book-learning from the dominie?’
    ‘Book-learning will maybe stand him in good stead one day. Meanwhile – he