"For a Fifer, ye are a man of some discernment," he said; "and your duds fit me no that ill. They maun hae been made for ye when ye were younger, and altogether a better-lookin' figure o' a man!" "Aye; they were cutted oot for me when I was coortin'--no this ane," Sandy Lyall explained, indicating his present wife with a placid, contemptuous thumb, "but a braw, weel-tochered lass oot o' the pairish o' Sant Andros. But she wadna hae me because I cam' frae Pittenweem. She said I smelled o' fish-creels." "And what, Master Lyall, might have brought you to Flanders?" asked Wat, who had been waiting as patiently as he might while his companion arrayed himself. He thought that this otiose burgher of Pittenweem must be a strange subject for the religious enthusiasm which was mostly in these days the cause of a man's being exiled from his native country. "Weel," returned Sandy, with immense and impressive gravity, checking off the details upon the palm of one hand with the index-finger of the other, "ye see the way o't was this: There was a lass, and there was a man, and there was me. And the man and me, we baith wanted the lass--ye comprehend? And the lass didna want but ane o' us. And that ane wasna me. So I gied the man a clour, and he fell to the grund and didna get up. And the lass she gaed and telled. So that was the way that I left my native land for conscience' sake." Wat marvelled at the simple, quiet-looking man who had so strenuously arranged matters to his satisfaction before leaving his love and the land of his birth. "Aye, but that wasna the warst o' it," Sandy Lyall went on, "for, a' owin' to that lang-tongued limmer, I had to leave ahint me as thrivin' a cooper's business as there was in a' the heartsome toon o' Pittenweem--aye, and as mony as half a score o' folk owin' me siller! But I owed ither folk a deal mair, and that was aye some consolation." CHAPTER VI THE PRINCE OF ORANGE In a long, low, narrow room in the palace of the stadtholder in the city of Amersfort, sat Murdo, Lord of Barra and the Small Isles. The head of a great though isolated western clan, he had detached himself from the general sentiments of his people with regard to religion and loyalty. First his father and then he himself had taken the Covenanting side in the national struggle--his father through interest and conviction, the son from interest alone. Both, however, had carried with them the unquestioning loyalty of their clan, so that it became an important consideration to any claimant for the throne of Britain who desired quietness in the north to have on his side the McAlisters, Lords of Barra and the Small Isles.