The Honourable Captain Marmaduke Muir, second son of the sixteenth Baron Drummuir of Drummuir, home on leave after an absence of ten years on foreign service, looked at the grand-daughter of his father's head piper and general majordomo as if considering anger. He was too good looking to be accustomed to such rebuffs from pretty girls, especially when they were manifestly beneath him in station. Then suddenly he laughed. The years had fled, and he was a boy again in fast fellowship with a small hoyden of a girl; a girl four years his junior, but infinitely his superior in common sense; a girl who had kept him out of many a scrape and who hadn't scrupled on occasion to box his ears, young master though he was. With a sudden flash of memory the occasion came back to him, and he saw himself, a strong lad of fourteen, wading a swollen stream with the ten-year-old girlie on his back, a string of handsome trouties he had been catching hanging like a tail from his hands clasped behind his burden. He heard the agonised cry in mid-stream, "They're slippin', Maister Duke, they're slippin'! Let me down till I hoosen them up!" He heard the stiff reply: "Let 'em slip; I'll no let ye down tae soak ye through!" And then the woeful battle of wills that ensued, while the trouties slipped from the string one by one. A battle which ended in a sobbing girlie ankle deep in water, an empty string, and a defiant lad with young crimson ears. He felt his mature ones tingle with amusement at the recollection, and at the recognition that the girlie was as ready of resentment as ever. "Ods bobs, Marmie!" he cried, his face full of mischief. "It seems you've no forgotten the whaur-aboots of my lugs," and his hands went up to his face as if to protect them. The girl crimsoned. "I begged your pardon then, Captain Marmaduke, and I beg it again if I've offended----" she began defiantly. He interrupted her with an absolutely charming smile, a deference that was unanswerable. "And I beg yours for remembering what I should have forgotten. So we are quits and can surely shake hands on it like the good friends we always were, and"--here his voice took on additional charm--"always will be. Of that I am sure." His bold blue eyes were on hers frankly, and she gave him back his look steadily. So they stood, shapely hand in shapely hand, for a second. Then his left fingers caught at hers and felt the first one inquisitively. "Hullo, seamstress, that's new?" he queried, evidently pleased with his own cleverness in detection. Marrion Paul drew her hand away sharply. "I've been at the dressmaking in Edinbro' these six years since grandfather married," she replied coldly. Marmaduke looked at Davie Sim incredulously. "What, Davie! You old reprobate, who the deuce did you get to marry you?"