The spectacle had hardly been an improving one. The young laird had been demeaning himself in some lights, trifling with a poor country girl, and exposing her, as he ought not to have done, to serious misconstruction and harm. Peggy, like a senseless girl, had been laying herself open to scandal and slander and a hundred graver dangers. Still the pair had been a pretty pair, however ill-matched--there is no denying it. The laird in his riding-coat and boots and tops, gaily flourishing his silver-mounted whip; Peggy in her blue-and-red striped linsey-woolsey petticoat, white apron, blue-and-buff striped jacket, and her duffle mantle if it chanced to be wintry weather; her fair hair either bare and tied up with a riband--the relic of the old snood or cockernonie, or else covered by a Bessie-kell-a quilted cotton or woollen hood--under the curtains of which the bonnie face beamed with the mingled shyness and gladness of a child’s face. In a similar manner the larger groups, in which many minor figures had been represented with varying effect, were effaced from the canvas. These had shown Peggy on the harvest field where the laird, like Boaz of old, shared the labour and the mid-day meal of his servants. Detaching Peggy from the rest, he would act as ‘bandster’ to her shearing, or he would sit at her feet, and decree that as an equivalent to dipping her morsel in the vinegar, she should have her choice of the scones in the basket and the first draught of ale from the pitcher. In those days Peggy was the queen of the autumn fields--a gentle queen who bore the honours thrust upon her meekly. Still she did not fail to arouse animadversion, and the entire _tableau_ tended rather to the entertainment than the edification of the spectators. The sensations of the company were not of a much more generous or amiable description when Peggy was persuaded to fling her handkerchief to Drumsheugh in the coquettish old dance of ‘The Country Bumpkin;’ or when, at the entreaty of her lover, she sang with her flute-like pipe to a decorously hushed assembly, or sat as mute as a mouse while he sang in his trumpet tones. Her song might be ‘Ye Banks and Braes,’ or ‘Aye wauken O! wauken aye and weary’--both of which ditties held tender warnings to heedless girls, if they would but have taken the hints--or it might be some blyther measure. But his song never varied. It was always the bold, barefaced declaration-- Young Peggy blooms our bonniest lass, Her breath is like the morning, The rosy dawn, the springing grass With early gems adorning. with a peculiar emphasis on the verse-- Ye powers of honour, love, and truth, From every ill defend her; Inspire the highly-favoured youth The destinies intend her.