Indeed, Mrs. Ramsay had often enough seen Peggy before, and till lately had been in the habit of speaking to her in a gracious condescending way, becoming in a laird’s mother, when the girl worked in the fields, or carried in her yarn and eggs to the market at Craigie. But that notice and these salutations had been bestowed on Peggy Hedderwick, a cotter lass. It was Peggy Ramsay, the Lady’s son’s wife by a lawful though summary marriage, who in other circumstances might have been tremblingly desirous to prepossess the dowager-lady in the younger woman’s favour. As it was, Peggy could but take down from their respective ‘cleeks’ her ordinary duffle cloak and rustic straw bonnet as the articles of dress which came readily to her hand, and tie their strings in such desperate speed and confusion that they at once fell into ‘run knots,’ which must be cut or torn asunder before she could be freed from their encumbrance when she arrived at Drumsheugh. ‘God bless you, my lass, gin this be fare-you-weel,’ her mother’s quavering voice said wistfully, and Peggy minded so far as to turn quickly before quitting the room and bend over the prostrate figure with a half-choked reply, ‘Mither, Merrin will be in next door or I’m weel gane, gin you gie a chap she’ll look ben and see to you. If I dinna come back the nicht, I’ll send ower the first thing the morn, and I’ll never forget you, mither, only I can think o’ naething but him the nicht.’ Peggy had no other idea than that she would trudge on foot all the way through the cold, darkness and storm, too thankful to have Balcairnie’s escort to Drumsheugh. But he had made a more considerate arrangement, though his care for Peggy had not impelled him to so bold a measure as ordering out the Drumsheugh coach to fulfil the lady’s commission and for Peggy’s benefit. When it came to that, he had never dreamt of such a step. Peggy and the family coach--the chief symbol of the country gentry’s rank and state, were still far apart even in Balcairnie’s loyal eyes. If Peggy should ever arrive at ordering out the Drumsheugh coach, and driving in it at her pleasure, as another young Mrs. Ramsay might have done in the sense of an unquestionable right, it could only be after a considerable apprenticeship still to sufferance and dependence on the part of the low-born wife. Balcairnie had merely brought his horse, with a pillion fastened to the saddle. There was no ‘louping-on-stane’ at the cot-house door. Nobody except the laird had been in the habit of mounting and dismounting there, any more than of driving up in a coach with horses taken from the plough. But the example of Katherine Janfarie’s lover, though it had not yet been sung in more than the rough border ballad, could very well be followed in one respect-- He’s mounted her hie behind himsel’, At her kinsmen speer’d nae leave.