"You mean the prisoner of Chillon. Byron wrote about him. Who is Mr. Ferguson?" "He's the schoolmaster over at Abertarlie. He teaches me lessons after school hours. Nan won't let me go to school with the other bairns—I'd like to. How long are you going to be in this prison, and is Niddy-Noddy a policeman?" "I rather wish he was. Then I could run away from him. He's a wise old doctor who has tied me down to my bed, and told me to stay in it for a year! How would you like that? Never to be able to run about out-of-doors, or even change your room." "It's horrible!" exclaimed Mysie. "Are you really tied to it?" "By my honour," said Rowena. "What's that?" "Well, it's another word for duty. If you make a promise, you must keep it, or you lose your honour. And it's a mark of a true gentleman and lady to keep their honour unsoiled." "I don't want to be either," said Mysie promptly. "I want to be a boy." When tea was over Granny came in. "I've been thinking, mem, it will be Anne Macdonald that will be anxious—an' Colin be drivin' for some corn—the t'other side o' the loch—and Mysie can just ride off wi' him." Mysie made a grimace in the old woman's face. "I'm all right here for a wee bit," she said. But Granny was quite firm, she took her off to get into her kilt, which was dry by this time; and then brought her in to say good-bye to Rowena. "You must come again soon and see me," Rowena said; "you've brightened up an hour for the poor captive." Mysie laughed. "And will you call me Flora?" "Good-bye, Flora. Take care of yourself. We are going to be friends." The little girl departed. Granny came in to talk about her when she had gone. "Who teaches her such good English?" asked Rowena. "I pictured her a little heathen savage, brought up in a crofter's hut." "Ah, indeed and indeed no! Anne Macdonald was a schoolmistress before she took service with the laird and his lady, a most superior young woman, and she took charge of the bairn from her birth. Ye see Angus have been the laird's gillie all his life for he was his father's gillie before him, an' Angus an' Anne made a match of it, an' then Angus got the sma' farm ower to Barncrassie, an' when the laird's leddy were in toon the bairn mad' her home wi' 'em. An' then Mrs. Macdonald died, an' the bairn have stayed wi' Anne ever since. She've paid a mighty lot o' attention to Mysie's manners and talk, an' in mony ways the little lassie has been bred more carefully than even wi' her own people—for the laird be a dour silent mon, an' when he's doon for a wee bit time has just shut himsel' awa' from all folk, an' come an' gone like a shadow on the wall!" "And has he never troubled to see his child? What an unnatural father!" Granny only shook her head hopelessly, and the conversation ended. Rowena began to look forward to seeing her small visitor again. CHAPTER III MYSIE MACDONALD