Of this time I have one thing more to tell. It was between the hours of ten and eleven of the day following this strange night, that my mother, having set all her house maidens to their tasks with her ordinary care and discretion, took down the bake-board and hung the girdle above a clear red fire of peat. Sometimes she did this herself, especially when my father was from home. For she was a master baker, and my father often vowed that he would have her made the deacon of the trade in Dumfries, where he had a house. He was indeed mortally fond of her girdle-cakes, and had wheaten flour ground fine at a distant mill for the purpose of making them. "Mary Hope," he used to say to her in his daffing way, "your scones are better than your father's law. I wonder wha learned ye to bake aboot Craigieha'--tho', I grant, mony's the puir man the faither o' ye has keepit braw and het on a girdle, while he stirred him aboot wi' his tongue." This he said because my mother was a daughter of my Lord Hope of Craigiehall, who had been President of the Court of Session in his time, and a very notable greatman in the State. So, as I say, this day she set to the baking early, and it went to my heart when I saw she was making the wheaten cakes raised with sour buttermilk that were my father's favourites. She had not been at it long before in came Jock o' the Garpel, hot-foot from the hill. "Maister Alexander!" he cried, panting and broken-winded with haste, "Maister Alexander is comin' ower the Brae!" There was silence in the wide kitchen for a moment, only the sound of my mother's roller being heard, "dunt-dunting" on the dough. "Is he by his lane?" asked my mother without raising her head from the bake-board. "Ay," said Jock o' the Garpel, "a' by his lane. No a man rides ahint him." And again there was silence in the wide house of Earlstoun. My mother went to the girdle to turn the wheaten cakes that were my father's favourites, and as she bent over the fire, there was a sound as if rain-drops were falling and birsling upon the hot girdle. But it was only the water running down my mother's cheeks for the love of her youth, because now her last hope was fairly gone. Then in the middle of her turning she drew the girdle off the fire, not hastily, but with care and composedness. "I'll bake nae mair," she cried, "Sandy has come ower the hill his lane!" And I caught my mother in my arms. CHAPTER V. THE CLASH OF WORDS.