A large farm it was, needing many hands to work it,--byre, stable, plough-lands, hill pasture, flat and heathery in appearance and outline, but satisfactory for sheep-feeding--that was Glenanmays. Diarmid had three sons and four daughters, with most of whom this history must one time or another concern itself. Diarmid also was no mean citizen of any state, hard to be driven, temperate, humorous and dour. He held for the old ways, and each day presided at meals, his bonnet of blue on his head, broad as a barrow-wheel, and brought all the way from Kilmarnock. All the rest of the table sat bareheaded--the sons and daughters whom God had given him, as well as the hired servant, and even the stranger within his gates. For at Glenanmays there was no master but old Diarmid Garland. To each man and maid there was set down a plate of earthenware, a horn spoon, a knife and fork--that is, for all who fed at the high table, over which the blue Kilmarnock bonnet of the master presided. For the minute or so while he said grace or "returned thanks," Diarmid took off his bonnet, but resumed it the moment after. He doffed his blue crown of his to God alone, and even his liege lord, Adam Ferris, had to content himself with a hand carried half military fashion to its weather-beaten brim. When Adam dined, as he often did, at the bountiful table of Glenanmays, he also found his horn spoon, his knife and fork beside his plate, and he was always careful to set his hat, his riding-whip and his gloves and cape behind the door. Then, bareheaded, he took his place on the right hand of his host at the long oaken table, to which in due order came son, daughter, house-maiden, out-lass, ploughman and herd. The only difference was that when it came to the blessing upon the food to be partaken of, Adam the Laird stood up, while the others sat still with bowed heads. Why this was, no one knew, not even Adam or Diarmid. But so it had been in the time of their fathers, and so it would continue till there was not a Ferris in Cairn Ferris--a time which neither liked to consider--for the same thought came to both--how that Patsy being an heiress, Patsy would marry, and the lands that had so long been those of Ferris of Cairn Ferris would pass to children of another name. At the end of the long red-tiled kitchen in which the family meals were served opened out a sort of back-kitchen to which a wooden extension had been added. It was a sort of Court of the Young Lions, where herd-boys, out-workers of the daily-wage sort, turnip-singlers, Irish harvesters, Stranryan "strappers" and "lifters," crow-boys, and all the miscellany of a Galloway farm about the end of the Napoleonic wars ate from wooden platters, with only their own horn spoon and pocket-knife to aid their nimble fingers. There was no complaint, for Glenanmays was "a grand meat house," and with the broth served without stint and the meats rent asunder by the hands of the senior ploughman, the Young Lions did very well.