So saying, Will howked the boy out o' the mids o' a great heap o' claes, rowed him up as weel as he could, and then said, after two or three sobs, "I like ill to part wi' him, but a mother's aye a mother." Then he kissed him, and added, "Fare-ye weel, my wee man! You and I will may-be never meet again; but, whether or no, you will be nae the waur o' a trooper's blessing. An ye be spared ye'll be a man when auld Will Laidlaw's head is laid i' the grave. Hae, honest woman, there's your son, and God bless you baith!" She bent her body over him in the most affectionate way, and stretched her arms as if to embrace him, but she neither touched him nor any part of Laidlaw's claes. The boy had awakened, and when Will held him out to give him up to his mother, he cried out, "No-no-no-no. No go ty'e, no go t'ye. Daddy's boy feared, daddy's boy feared." "Gude faith, sae ye may, my man! thinks I to mysel, "an ye kend about a' this as weel as I do!" I saw naething that was passing, for I was lying close on my face, and hinging by the heather; but I heard a that was said, and Will tauld me the rest afterwards. He said, she made the sign of the cross above her child's breast, then over his own head, as he stooped forward with him in his arms. Then she glided aside, and made the cross over my head and shoulders, and it was heaven's grace that I didna ken, else I wad hae swarfed away. Last of all, she again bent herself over her child, and stretched out her arms on each side of him; then, leaning herself back on the air, she arose gently from the ground, and sailed away through the dim shades of the morning toward the verge of the heaven. I wondered what was asteer then, for I heard Will crying on the Virgin Mary to preserve him, and rhaming o'er the names o' a' the saints he had ever heard of; and at length he gae a great gluther, like a man drowning, and fell down wi' sic a dunt he gart a' the moss shake again. The bairn screamed and grat; and I didna ken what to do, for I durstna look up for fear o' seeing the ghost; till at length I heard that the rest of the sentinels had caught the alarm, and were passing the watch-word frae ane to another, and then I ventured to set up my head. But, gude and gracious, sic a grip as I did haud by the heather!