But I made no answer, not indeed having any to make, and so marched off by myself. Yet for all Nell’s ill-treatment and scorning of me, I did not grieve any more for that minx Kate. For, as I was no long time in discovering, the pretty traitress had told Nell many of those sweet things I had said to her. I never imagined that girls told such speeches and love-makings the one to the other. I had aways believed that a lass kept her own secrets, and only told other people’s. It was, indeed, most true what Nell had cast up to me. I was but a simple lad. *CHAPTER XXVII* *ON THE HEARTSOME HEATHER* Now I must tell during this time of Sir Thomas Kennedy. He seemed altogether another man. He had ever, indeed, been kindly and generous, forgiving and unsuspicious. But during these spring months of the year after Bargany’s death, he seemed to ripen like a winter apple when it is laid by, till there was no more sourness in him anywhere. Oftentimes he would come and cause me to read to him out of the Gospels. Aforetime it had always been from the Old Testament, which I had ever thought the more interesting, till Sir Thomas that spring showed me other of it, making me read through the Holy Gospels. Indeed, to talk with him and watch his life was better than any sermon. I declare that before I understood his character and thought, I knew not that religion was aught more than the colour of a faction—a thing to fight about, like the blood feuds of Cassillis and Bargany, concerning the wrong and right of which not one in a thousand knows anything, and still fewer care. Yet for all his increasing gentleness there was naught unmanly about my lord, but ever the bearing and speech of a most courteous knight. He had a great love for noble and sweet music, and often diverted himself on the viol, upon which he played most masterly. The scurril jest, indeed, he would sharply reprove; but his heart still inclined to wit and mirth, and his countenance was constantly cheerful.