If Balcairnie had ever entertained a tender inclination towards Peggy, it made no ill-blood between him and his friend the laird. It was probably early nipped in the bud by the fact that Peggy’s favours had been swiftly transferred, ere they were well bestowed, from Balcairnie to Drumsheugh. Balcairnie was once heard reproaching her, more waggishly than bitterly, ‘Ay, Peggy, when I gie you a turn in the reel, fient a kiss you grant me now, gin the laird be by.’ For Peggy, with all her virtues, was a woman still. She was caught while her fancy was yet hovering in its flight, by the glamour of superior rank. Both of her admirers were bonnie and fine lads to her, in the first blush of their admiration, and while both were above her in station, there was not much to choose between them. But the lairdship, and perhaps the greater boldness of Drumsheugh, turned the scales, and after a few months of ardent courtship Peggy was as far gone as her lover. She would no more have permitted a comparison between the merits of Drumsheugh and Balcairnie--though the latter was her very good friend just as he was the laird’s--than she would have suffered the old bed-ridden mother who had borne her and toiled for her to be matched with any other woman in the kingdom, be she Queen Charlotte seated with her golden sceptre in her hand by the side of King George on the throne. FOOTNOTES: [1] In Scotland the distinction between a yeoman farmer--one who owns his farm--and a tenant farmer is not strictly preserved. The term yeoman is, or was, employed indiscriminately to any farmer. [2] A harvest-home, so called from the last sheaf of corn cut on the farm for the season. It was allowed to fall to the share of the best shearer or reaper, who tied it up with ribands so that it might take the semblance of a doll. It was then hung conspicuously as the chief adornment of the principal wall of the barn in which the ‘maiden’--called in the north of Scotland the ‘kirn,’ was held. The decked-up sheaf was finally carried home by its proud winner, and suspended on the wall of her cottage, where it was treasured as a token of her prowess. CHAPTER II. PEGGY’S WEDDING. There came a crisis to all those thoughtless daring doings, and it did not proceed from the old Lady of Drumsheugh, much as she loved to lead in life. She had ruled with a high hand her old husband, who, if all tales were true, was not an easy person to guide; but his young son, with his easy temper and pleasant speech to the world at large, though he was a good son at home when he was let alone, threatened to prove too much for her.