A brightness came into her uncle's eyes. "I have known many and learned much," he thought, "but I have missed the best." "Come, Uncle," she said, tapping the grass with her shoe, "I can't run as well as in kilt and sandals, or like the girl who played ball on the sands, but I can beat you--yes, I could run in circles about you!" "I know, I know, you swallow!" proclaimed an admiring uncle. "But the day is past when I ran after agreeable young women. Generally they have to pocket their pride and come to see me--you do every day, you know!" "Yes," said Patsy, "but do not think it is to see you, even if you are my mother's brother--" "Half-brother--" "My mother's brother, I say," persisted Patsy. "It is because you teach me to speak French and to read Latin books, and the mathematic (though that I love not so well), and also chiefly because you lend me many books to read up in dull old Cairn Ferris." "Do not blaspheme the habitation of your fathers," said Julian Wemyss. "Here is a house all ready for you when you marry. If it were not for the table of affinities in the beginning of the Bible, and if I were twenty years younger, I should ask you myself!" "Oh," said Patsy, "that would be splendid. You are far the nicest man and the most interesting I ever talked to. Don't ask me, for I should say 'yes' in a minute." * * * * * Usually Patsy Ferris and her father had not much to say to one another. "Good morning, daughter!" quoth Adam, coming in from his early inspection; "whither away with such skip-jack grace, habited in yellow and black like a wasp?" "I have done my work, father," Patsy would answer. "I promised to go help Jean at Glenanmays. The lads are all in the heather and the maids have to do the heavy work of the field." "But not you--I cannot have you handling the hoe and rake like a field worker!" "No, no, father; Jean is always indoors or at the dairy." Adam Ferris looked thoughtful and his dark brows drew together. He detested the press-gang and all it meant to the young men of the parish. "I could send over a man or two, but my grieve or I myself would require to accompany them for protection against seizure." "No need," said his daughter, hastily. "Diarmid would not wish to draw you into his sons' quarrels and, I think, Stair's band ran a big cargo last night from the Burnfoot Bay. There were twenty preventive men there, they say. Yet they stood aside and let the pack horses go by like men in a dream!" Adam grew a little paler. He did not like this open defiance of the forces of law and order. "How was that?" he demanded, "where was the military?" "There were two hundred lads, all masked and all armed, a hundred pack horses and another hundred to ride upon. What could twenty customs men do with the like of these? Stair Garland left enough good lads to herd them close under the cliff till the _Good Intent_ had her anchor up and the caravan was out of all reach of danger."