We forced our toes into the crevices of the wall and peeped stealthily over the top. Two boys of eight or ten years, with two younger children, were busily engaged in building a castle. A great pile of stones had been hauled to the spot, evidently for the purpose of mending the wall, and these were serving as rich material for sport. The oldest of the company, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy in an Eton jacket and broad white collar, was obviously commander-in-chief; and the next in size, whom he called Rafe, was a laddie of eight, in kilts. These two looked as if they might be scions of the aristocracy, while Dandie and the Wrig were fat little yokels of another sort. The miniature castle must have been the work of several mornings, and was worthy of the respectful but silent admiration with which we gazed upon it; but as the last stone was placed in the tower, the master builder looked up and spied our interested eyes peering at him over the wall. We were properly abashed, and ducked our heads discreetly at once, but were reassured by hearing him run rapidly towards us, calling, “Stop, if you please! Have you anything on just now--are you busy?” We answered that we were quite at leisure. “Then would you mind coming in to help us play 'Sir Patrick Spens'? There aren't enough of us to do it nicely.” This confidence was touching, and luckily it was not in the least misplaced. Playing 'Sir Patrick Spens' was exactly in our line, little as he suspected it. “Come and help?” I said. “Simply delighted! Do come, Fanny dear. How can we get over the wall?” “I'll show you the good broken place!” cried Sir Apple-Cheek; and following his directions we scrambled through, while Rafe took off his Highland bonnet ceremoniously and handed us down to earth. “Hurrah! now it will be something like fun! Do you know 'Sir Patrick Spens'?” “Every word of it. Don't you want us to pass an examination before you allow us in the game?” “No,” he answered gravely; “it's a great help, of course, to know it, but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little.” (Here he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) “We've done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is the 'eldern knight,'--you remember him?” “Certainly; he sat at the king's right knee.” “Yes, yes, that's the one! Then Rafe is Sir Patrick part of the time, and I the other part, because everybody likes to be him; but there's nobody left for the 'lords o' Noroway' or the sailors, and the Wrig is the only maiden to sit on the shore, and she always forgets to comb her hair and weep at the right time.”