THOMAS THE RHYMER 195 LORD SOULIS 214 THE BROWNIE OF BLEDNOCK 234 SIR PATRICK SPENS 244 YOUNG BEKIE 259 THE EARL OF MAR'S DAUGHTER 274 HYNDE HORN 291 THE GAY GOS-HAWK 310 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR FROM DRAWINGS BY ALLAN STEWART "This very night we will ride over into Ettrick, and lift a wheen o' them" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE "My father eyed them keenly, his face growing grave as he did so" 36 "''Tis a God's-penny,' cried the guests in amazement" 158 "When she approached he pulled off his bonnet and louted low" 198 THE LOCHMABEN HARPER "Oh, heard ye of a silly harper, Wha lang lived in Lochmaben town, How he did gang to fair England, To steal King Henry's wanton brown?" Once upon a time, there was an old man in Lochmaben, who made his livelihood by going round the country playing on his harp. He was very old, and very blind, and there was such a simple air about him, that people were inclined to think that he had not all his wits, and they always called him "The silly Lochmaben Harper." Now Lochmaben is in Dumfriesshire, not very far from the English border, and the old man sometimes took his harp and made long journeys into England, playing at all the houses that he passed on the road. Once when he returned from one of these journeys, he told everyone how he had seen the English King, King Henry, who happened to be living at that time at a castle in the north of England, and although he thought the King a very fine-looking man indeed, he thought far more of a frisky brown horse which his Majesty had been riding, and he had made up his mind that some day it should be his. All the people laughed loudly when they heard this, and looked at one another and tapped their foreheads, and said, "Poor old man, his brain is a little touched; he grows sillier, and sillier;" but the Harper only smiled to himself, and went home to his cottage, where his wife was busy making porridge for his supper. "Wife," he said, setting down his harp in the corner of the room, "I am going to steal the King of England's brown horse." "Are you?" said his wife, and then she went on stirring the porridge. She knew her husband better than the neighbours did, and she knew that when he said a thing, he generally managed to do it. The old man sat looking into the fire for a long time, and at last he said, "I will need a horse with a foal, to help me: if I can find that, I can do it."