There comes a time when you can't beat a boy larger than yourself. Not that Rob would have complained or refused to submit. He was indifferent to such things. He had plenty of spirit of a dogged and inflammatory character, but it did not lie that way. If it consoled his aunt to beat him, then let her do so by all means. For all he knew it might be the time-honoured custom of maiden aunts. Miss Macpherson was, above all, a practical woman, and it was Rob's dreamy obliviousness to facts that fretted her. To sit watching muirfowl for hours together was more than any sensible body could tolerate. And that was Rob all over. He knew where the two-pound trout lay in the burn up in the hills. He could bring a curlew from the next glen in a perfect frenzy of agitation to learn what was the matter. He would spend nights together watching fox cubs playing under the moon. But of school and its tasks he had no tolerance. He was lying on the bank of a stream that spring day when it all came about. He did not hear the footsteps nor did he see the shadow on the water, but of a sudden there stood a very large and pleasant gentleman beside him, dressed in riding clothes, and with a handsome claymore at his side. "Cuddling?" said he very affably. "I mind the day when I could lay the bonnie ones in rows upon the bank." Rob stared at him with his ingenuous eyes. "It is fine to be young," went on the strange gentleman, "but there were no days like the old days." "Why do you say that?" asked Rob. The stranger suppressed a smile at his eager curiosity. "They have said that," he replied, "since Robert the Bruce heard it from his grandfather." "But were the old days so fine?" "Fine enough," he replied absently; "fine enough and yet none sae fine either--there is a bit tune I'm minded of..." and he took a curious little instrument out of his pocket made of reed, shaped like a piccolo. Then sitting upon a rock he played a tender little air with one eye glued to Rob to see how he took it, and his head cocked very drolly upon the side. "There's the 'Brogues of Fortune' for ye," he said. "Is it a very old tune?" asked Rob, greatly taken with the gentleman. "As old as the hills, laddie, and that's past counting--as old as the burn and the shadows on the brae, for it's part and parcel of them all, just strung together by mysel'." "You made it?" "Hech! there's nothing to skirl about. I make them all day. I canna eat my dinner but my feet are dirling to a tune that has no name and must have the go-by until I have a spare moment. Make them indeed!" "What else do you do?" asked Rob, in his innocent blunt way. The stranger laughed. "I can hear the owl passing over the brae in the night, I can see the stag hunkered amongst the crags, I can catch the otter at his play." "Can you call the weasel from his hole?" asked Rob. "Maybe I can," replied the other, "but try you first."