Sandy snatched his head from the snow swift as a blade that bends itself to the straight, and stood erect. There was no one in sight save little Davie, who danced at a distance and laughed innocently at the jest. For James, the doer of it, had instantly dropped into a deep snow passage. Whereat Sandy, cured as to his head, but villainously stung in the breech, turned him about in fierce anger, seeking for someone to truncheon. The lad Davie’s laugh annoyed him, and Sandy, being an adept at the palm play, sent a snowball at his young brother, which took him smartly upon the cheek. Instantly Davie, poor callant, set up a cry of pain, which brought his sister Nell upon the scene with all the furies in the tangle of her hair. ’Ye muckle, good-for-nothing calves!’ she cried, addressing both her unseen brothers, whom she well knew to be lying hidden somewhere among the snow passages of the courtyard, ’I will bring Launce Kennedy to you with a knotty stick, and that by my father’s orders—clodding at a bairn that gate, and garring him greet. Ye think I canna see ye, but if ye dinna come oot decently, I will come and bring ye. Ye may think black shame o’ yoursel’s!’ And this I do not doubt that James and Sandy did. For to be flyted upon by a lass, lying prone the while upon one’s stomach in a snow bank, does not make for self-respect. So both the lads began to crawl away as best they might from Nell’s dangerous neighbourhood. It jumped greatly with my humour to watch them from the upper window of the armoury which looked abroad over the court. All unwitting they approached the one to the other with their heads down, and at the corner, each running with full speed upon his hands and knees, they knocked their skulls together soundly, with a well-resounding crack which pleased me. Instantly they clinched and fought like wild cats, biting and fisting in the snow—till their father, attracted from the hall by the noise, came down and laid upon them both right soundly, with the great whip wherewith the dogs were beaten when they were trained for hunting. All this was excellent sport to me, but the best was yet to come. In a little thereafter I saw Nell, who was a merry lass when there was nothing upon her mind, come quietly out of the side door that led to the kitchen places, with David in her hand. She set him within a small flanking tower, which in old days had been loop-holed for arrows. Then she locked the door upon him, taking the key with her. Before she went she handed the boy two or three snowballs made from the wet, slushy snow, where the sunshine had caused some drops to melt off the roof and fall from the eaves. Thus she went to the corner, I watching with joy the while from the window of the armoury. ’Jamie, Sandy,’ she cried, ’come hither, lads. There’s something here for your private ear!’