"Dunno, I'm sure!" replied Bubble. "Father, he come down here one day, after blackberries, when he was a boy. He hearn a noise in there, an' went an' peeked in, an' there was the ol' Cap'n pokin' about with his big stick in the dirt. He looked up an' saw father, an' came at him with his stick up, roarin' like a mad bull, father said. An' he cut an' run, father did, an' he hearn the ol' Cap'n laughin' after him as if he'd have a fit. Crazy as a loon, I reckon the Cap'n was, though none of his folks thought so, Ma says." He let the wild briers fly back about the gloomy opening, and they stepped back on the smooth greensward again. Ah, how bright and warm the sunshine was, after that horrible black pit! Hilda shivered again at the thought of it, and then laughed at her own cowardice. She turned and gazed at the waterfall, creaming and curling over the rocks, and making such a merry, musical jest of its tumble into the pool. "Oh, lovely, lovely!" she cried, kissing her hand to it. "Bubble, do you know that Hartley's Glen is without exception the most beautiful place in the world?" "No, miss! Be it really?" asked Zerubbabel, seriously. "I allays thought 'twas kind of a sightly gully, but I didn't know't was all that." "Well, it is," said Hilda. "It is all that, and more; and I love it! But now, Bubble," she added, "we must make haste, for the farmer will be wanting you, and I have a dozen things to do before tea." "Yes, miss," said Bubble, but without his usual alacrity. Hilda saw a look of disappointment in his honest blue eyes, and asked what was the matter. "I ain't had my ballid!" said Zerubbabel, sadly. "Why, you poor lad, so you haven't!" said Hildegarde. "But you shall have it; I will tell it to you as we walk back to the farm. Which one will you have,--or shall I tell you a new one?" The blue eyes sparkled with the delight of anticipation. "Oh, please!" he cried; "the one about the bold Buckle-oh!" Hilda laughed merrily. "The bauld Buccleugh?" she repeated. "Oh! you mean 'Kinmont Willie.' Yes, indeed, you shall have that. It is one of my favorite ballads, and I am glad you like it." "Oh, I tell yer!" cried Bubble. "When he whangs the table, and says do they think his helmet's an old woman's bunnit, an' all the rest of it,--I tell ye that's _some_, Miss Hildy!" "You have the spirit of the verse, Bubble," said Hilda, laughing softly; "but the words are not _quite_ right." And she repeated the splendid, ringing words of Buccleugh's indignant outcry: "Oh! is my basnet a widow's curch, Or my lance a wand o' the willow-tree, Or my arm a lady's lily hand, That an English lord should lightly me? "And have they ta'en him, Kinmont Willie, Against the truce of Border tide, And forgotten that the bauld Buccleugh Is warden here o' the Scottish side?