“Come, come, Violet, you must be obedient,” said her father, hastily, shaking hands with his kinsman, whose old face, half grim, half humorous, was lighted up with sudden and keen enjoyment of the situation. Mr Pringle hurried his daughter on almost harshly in the confusion of his feelings. He had never been harsh to her before; and Violet, in her disappointment, took to crying quietly under her breath. “I should like to stay--I should like to stay!” she murmured; till out of pure exasperation the kindest of fathers could have whipped her, and thought of that operation as an actual relief to his feelings. Lord Eskside, on his part, stood still in the clearing, holding back Val, who was more vehement. “I want her to play with me; and you said I was to have whatever I wanted,” the boy cried, struggling with all his might to break away. “You must know, my man, that there are many things which we all want and cannot get,” cried the old lord, holding him fast; and then he burst into a low laugh. “Here’s a bonnie state of affairs already,” he said to himself: “Richard’s son breaking bounds to be after Sandy Pringle’s daughter! It’s the best joke I’ve heard for many a day. Come, Val, come, like a good boy. We’ll go and tell grandma. She may have a little girl in her pocket for anything you and I know.” “But I don’t want any little girl; I want _that_ little girl,” cried Val, with precocious discrimination. The old lord chuckled more and more as he half led, half dragged him up the steep path towards the house. “Man, if you’re after them like this already, we’ll have our hands full by the time you’re of age!” But when he had said this, Lord Eskside paused and contemplated his grandson, and shook his head. “Can he be Richard’s son after all?” the old man asked himself. Lord Eskside, however, looked grim enough before he went into the house, where he betook himself at once to the drawing-room in which his wife sat alone, at a window overlooking the river. He went in to her moody, with the air of a man who has something to say. “What is the matter?” said Lady Eskside. “Oh, nothing’s the matter. We’re entering into the botherations I foresaw, that’s all that’s the matter. Who do you think I met in the woods but that lawyer-rascal Sandy Pringle, come to spy out the nakedness of the land!” “And what nakedness is there to spy into? and what can Sandy Pringle do to you or me?” said the old lady, with a slight elevation of her head. “Not much, perhaps, to you or me. He’s taken the Hewan, Catherine, where he can lie in wait like an auld spider till he gets us into his net.” “I don’t understand you,” said the old lady, with the light of battle waking in her eyes. “What does it matter to us where Sandy Pringle lives? He has been out of the question, poor man, as everybody knows, since Providence sent to my son Richard his two bonnie boys.”