“I’ll no can speak to Miss Jean to day, Katie,” whispered uncle Sandy, as the little girl stole after them down stairs; “but keep you a good heart, my bonnie woman, there’s blythe days coming--and may be I’ll take ye to see your mother myself.” “Are you sure this will do, Mr. Charteris?” continued the old man, when they were again on their way to the town. Cuthbert was in great spirits. “I will astonish Davie Lindsay,” he said, smiling. “Oh yes, it will do, it was just the thing I wanted. Now we must have the register of the different marriages and births; that part of it will be easily managed, I fancy.” “My brother James’s Family Bible is in my house,” said uncle Sandy, “and he was married by Mr. Clunie, of the Old Kirk. I will go to the session clerk to-night, if you like, or it will be time enough the morn. He is never far out of the way, being an old man like myself, half idle, half independent. And, speaking of that, ye must see my garden, Mr. Charteris, though this is hardly the best time.” “You seem to keep it in excellent order,” said Cuthbert. “It’s no bad; you see, Mr. Charteris, the house is my own, and so is it,” said the old man, with a little natural pride, desiring to intimate that the substance was not altogether on the Calder side of Harry’s ancestry; “and it is just a pleasure to me to dibble at it in my own way. Indeed I think sometimes that it’s this work of mine, and the pleasure of seeing the new life aye coming up through the soil, that makes me like the bairns so well.” “It has not always so pleasant a result,” said Charteris. “Mostly, I think, mostly,” said Alexander. “For example, now, how could ye think a man that had such thoughts in his heart to a mouse or a gowan, as Burns had, could harm or be unkindly to the bits of buds of his own race; though to be sure I am not minding what a strong part evil had in that grand earthen vessel. Woes me! that what might have been a great light in the land should be but a beacon on the black rocks; but I never mind that when I read the Cottar.” “The Cottar is your favourite, I think,” said Charteris. “Aye--I confess I like them all, ill as some of them are,” said the poet’s countryman; “but the Cottar is near perfect to my vision--all but one place, where he puts in an apostrophe that breaks the story--that about ‘Sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth’--you mind? I aye skip that. He kent ill ower weel, poor man.” CHAPTER XIV. “Here hath been dawning Another blue day.” CARLYLE. THE next morning, Cuthbert busied himself in obtaining extracts from registers. The proof he procured was very full and clear, establishing the legal as well as the moral certainty.