chapel--retained the Scoticised name of the Saint. “There’s Dragon at the cross,” said Katie Calder, who was skipping on in advance, leaving Violet absorbed in a childish reverie behind, “and he’s telling a story to a’ the bairns.” So saying, Katie, who did not choose to lose the story, ran forward; while Lettie, only half awakened, and walking straight on in an unconscious, abstracted fashion peculiar to herself, had time to be gradually roused before she joined the little group which encircled the Dragon of Allenders. He, poor old man, leaned against the cross, making a gesture now and then with those strange dangling arms of his which, called forth a burst of laughter, and scattered the little crowd around him for a moment, only to gather them closer the next. He was, indeed, telling a story--a story out of the Arabian Nights, which Violet herself had left in his room. “Ay, bairns, ye see I’m just ready,” said Dragon, finishing “Sinbad the Sailor,” with a flourish of those long disjointed arms. “Ony divert does to pass the time when ane’s waiting, for ye’re aff-putting monkeys, and might hae been here half an hour since--no to say there’s a grand dinner making at the house, and as many flowers pu’ed as would plenish a poor man’s garden, and Miss Rose dressed like a fairy in a white gown, and ilka ane grander than anither. Whisht, wee laddies! do ye no see the twa missies carrying their ain books hame frae the school, and I maunna stop to tell ony mair stories to you.” “Come back the morn, Dragon.” “Dinna eat them, Dragon, or chain them up in your den.” “If ye do, I’ll come out and fecht ye!” cried the “laddies” of Maidlin Cross; for those sturdy young sons of the soil, in two distinct factions, gave their fervent admiration to Katie and Violet, and would have been but too happy to do battle for them on any feasible occasion. “Have they come, Dragon?” asked Lettie. “Has Harry and Mr. Charteris come?” “Nae word of them, nae word of them,” answered the Dragon. “They’re in at Stirling doing their ain pleasure, ye may tak my word for that. See, bairns, yonder’s Geordie Paxton, my sister’s son, coming in frae the field. He’s very sune dune the nicht. Just you look at him as he gangs by, and see what an auld failed man he is, aulder like than me.” Geordie, laden with his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, was returning home with those heavy, lengthened, slow strides which almost persuade you that some great clod drags back the heavy-weighted footstep of the rustic labourer. He was a man of fifty, with bent shoulders and a furrowed face; but though their old attendant advanced to him at a pace which Geordie’s slow step could ill have emulated, the children, glancing up at the hale, brown, careworn face of the family father, and contrasting with it their poor old Dragon’s ashy cheeks and wandering eyes, were by no means inclined to pronounce Geordie as old as his uncle.