’You, a burgess and a learned man, with an official rent and a yearly charge on the burgh, yet cannot get so much as a cotter’s sonsy bit lass to keep you company, and to sit, canty like Jenny and Jock, on the far side of the chimbley lug. Think shame of yourself, Dominie. Any questing lout that can persuade a tow-headed Mall of the byre to set up house with him, deserves better of his country than you. Were all of your mind, Maybole school might have none to attend it but dotards and grandmothers! And where were your craft then, Socrates?’ I asked him, for just before he had been speaking to me of a certain wise man, a Greek of that name. And at first he made a jest of the matter, as indeed I meant it. ’Never fear,’ he said, ’there will always be enough fools in Ayrshire to get more. Maybole shall have its share of these.’ And indeed that hath been the repute of our town and countryside ever since Ayr water first ran over its pebbles! Yet when I pressed the Dominie further upon the matter, he waxed thoughtful. His face, which was not naturally merry, took on a still sterner expression. Presently he put his hand within his blouse and pulled out a little string of beads, such as Catholics wear to mind them of their prayers. It was suspended about his neck. This, I own, was a great marvel to me, for the Dominie was a strong Reformer, and showed little mercy in arguing with men still inclined to the ancient opinion. He gave the brown rosary into my hand, and I turned it curiously about. It was made of the stones of some foreign fruit, most quaintly and fantastically carven and joined together with little links of gold. Between two of the beads there was a longer portion of the chain, and upon it two rings of gold were strung. ’Once,’ said the Dominie, ’there was a maid who had promised to share my hearth. One ring of these two was mine, to wear upon my finger, and one was hers. Upon the night before our marriage day we met at our place of tryst. I tried the ring upon her finger ard wished her to wear it that night. ’To-morrow will serve—it is not so far away!’ she said, and slipped from my arms. Under a new-risen moon she went homeward, singing by the heads of Benane. And that was the last that these eyes ever beheld of bonny Mary Torrance—save only this necklace of beads which she wore, and the stain of her blood upon the short grass of the seashore.’ The Dominie looked long to seaward at the flashing birds that circled and clanged about our rocky isle, each tribe of them following its own orbit and keeping to its own airy sphere. ’And what happened to her?’ I began, but got no further.