I have gone through the world bound always to say what was in me, and that has been my sore loss more than once; but to speak thus to an old man, who had done me no ill beyond demonstrating the general world's attitude to poetry and men of sentiment, was the blackest insolence. He was well advised to send me home for a leathering at my father's hands. And I got the leathering, too, though it was three months after. I had been off in the interim upon a sloop ship out of Ayr. But here I am havering, and the tilted cart with my father and me in it toiling on the mucky way through the Meams; and it has escaped couping into the Earn at the ford, and it has landed us at the gate of home; and in all that weary journey never a word, good or ill, from the man that loved me and my mother before all else in a world he was well content with. Mother was at the door; that daunted me. “Ye must be fair starving, Paul,” quoth she softly with her hand on my arm, and I daresay my face was blae with cold and chagrin. But my father was not to let a disgrace well merited blow over just like that. “Here's our little Paul, Katrine,” said he, and me towering a head or two above the pair of them and a black down already on my face. “Here's our little Paul. I hope you have not put by his bibs and daidlies, for the wee man's not able to sup the good things of this life clean yet.” And that was the last word of reproof I heard for my folly from my father Quentin Greig. CHAPTER II MISS FORTUNE'S TRYST BY WATER OF EARN, AND HOW I MARRED THE SAME UNWITTINGLY