‘Yes,’ said Margaret. ‘They say that once a young man was carrying off his sweetheart, when her father and brothers pursued them. The girl was riding on a pillion behind her lover. As the only way of escape, he put his horse at the gap over our heads--it must have been narrower in those days than it is now--missed it, and both himself and the lady were killed in the fall.’ ‘Dreadful!’ I exclaimed. ‘Of course it isn’t true,’ pursued Margaret tranquilly. ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Oh, such stories never are; they are all romantic nonsense.’ ‘How different your streams are from those in the south,’ said I, after a pause; ‘Tennyson’s description of a brook would hardly suit this one.’ ‘What is that?’ she inquired. ‘Don’t you know it?’ I asked, letting my surprise get the better of my good manners. ‘No, I never heard it,’ she said, without the least tinge of embarrassment; so I repeated the well-known lines, to which Margaret listened with her eyes still fixed on the rushing water. ‘They are very pretty,’ said the girl, when I had finished; ‘but I should not care for a brook like that. I should think it would be very much like a canal, wouldn’t it?--only smaller. I like my own brook better; and I like Burns’s description of one better than Tennyson’s.’ ‘Has Burns described a brook? I wish you would quote it to me,’ said I. ‘Surely you know the lines,’ said Margaret; ‘they are in “Hallowe’en.”’ I assured her I did not, and in a low clear voice she repeated: ‘Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, As through the glen it wimples; Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays; Whyles in a wiel it dimples. Whyles glitterin’ to the noontide rays, Wi’ bickerin’, dancin’ dazzle, Whyles cookin’ underneath the braes, Below the spreading hazel.’ ‘I think they are beautiful lines, so far as I understand them,’ was my verdict. ‘What is “cookin’,” for example? I know it does not mean frying, or anything of that kind, but----’ I stopped, for the girl looked half offended at my poor little attempt to be funny at the expense of a Scotch word. ‘There is no word for it in English, that I know of,’ she said. ‘It means crouching down, contentedly, in a comfortable place. If you saw a hen on a windy day under a stook of corn, you might say it was “cooking” there.’ ‘Thank you,’ I replied; ‘I won’t forget. And now I must be off, for I know you came here to read.’ If in my vanity I had hoped for permission to remain, I was disappointed. Nothing of the kind was forthcoming. ‘I hope you have got an interesting book,’ said I, wondering what the old brown-leather volume could be. ‘You might not think it very interesting,’ answered Margaret, raising her lovely eyes to mine, as tranquilly as if she had been speaking of a newspaper. ‘It is only a volume of old sermons. Good-bye till dinner-time, Mr. Blake;’ and so saying she turned to seek her favourite nook, at the side of the waterfall.