With three Galloway ponies and the contagion of her own enthusiasm Patsy undertook to arouse the country. She would save Stair and Julian by raising the siege of the Bothy on the Wild of Blairmore. She called upon her father at the gloomy house of Cairn Ferris and explained to him what she meant to do. She would not remain there in the meanwhile, but if he would lend her a pony or two, either from his stable or from among those running wild on the moors, she would not compromise him in any way. "Whom, then, did she mean to compromise?" Her father put the question patiently. Oh, Kennedy McClure was helping her, and Frank Airie, the Poor Scholar, and the Glenanmays lads--all the Stair Garland band, in fact. Yes, Miss Aline and the Austrian hunter were safe at Ladykirk. She could not have her mixed up in such a business, and Heinrich Wolf would look after her. Adam Ferris listened and nodded his head. "I am a barn-door fowl that has hatched out a sparrow-hawk," he said meekly. "Do not pyke your father's eyes out, chicken!" And with this paternal benediction Patsy went forth on her errand. Stair's Honeypot was at the door. Fergus Garland had brought him, offering at the same time to steal Derry Down from the Castle Raincy meadows. But this Patsy refused. She was not feeling particularly well affected towards Louis Raincy at that moment. Louis, as it were, had outlived his popularity. Then began a great time. As flame after flame of lambent fire plays over the southern sky some eve of summer lightning, so Patsy came, and flashed, and passed. Hearts waited expectant before her, grew angry and determined as they listened (not the young men only) to the tale of her wrongs, also of Stair Garland's courage and Julian Wemyss's duel. She passed and left armed men with a definite rendezvous in her wake. Still keeping high up upon the pony tracks of the moors, she passed eastwards to the Cree, crossed it, and with Godfrey McCulloch to aid her, she carried the fiery cross along the shore-side of Solway to the great arch of the Needle's Eye, which is at Douglasha', in the parish of Colvend. Here she turned, for she was frightened at what might be going on during her absence in the dim region of the flowes and flooded marshes called the Wild of Blairmore. Behind her lads were marching. The countryside was moving. They had sworn to save Stair Garland and Julian Wemyss, and, if need be, they were ready to push the invaders of their Free Province into the sea. Rebellion, not such a thing! Merely the affirmation of ancient privileges.