After this manner old Walter ruminated on the unexplained statement of his wife; and, by repeating it again and again, roused the pride that lay at the bottom of his heart, and made him wax even angry with the wife of his bosom, and she the Flower of Yarrow, and the mother of his six sons. But, angry as he was, he was also weary, having been hunting in the forest during the day; and he went to sleep, muttering, as he struggled ineffectually with the drowsy god, some oaths peculiar to himself, and to the effect that, take Gilmanscleugh when he chose, it should not suffice for the portion of two sons. In the morning he awoke, but did not forget the statement of Mary, that had given a momentary impulse to his bile, and, repairing to the breakfast-room, he found there his six sons and his wife, who, from some fugitive indications of face and manner, appeared to be engaged in some by-plot, in which she was the exclusive actor. Her original beauty, which acquired for her the poetical soubriquet by which she was so well known, still vindicated a place among the ravages of advanced ago, and her spirit, in place of falling with her bodily strength, had increased, and was continually breaking forth in expressions of vivacity and humour, which sustained the heart of the old chief, and made her the sun of the domestic circle which she had so long graced with her beauty. She was now in the very height of her most delightful occupation--serving up with her own hands the morning meal of her brave Wat and her six gallant sons, the parallel of whom, for make and manhood, might not again be found in broad Scotland. So happy was she, and so full of the joyous and soul-cheering fire of a woman's humour, that the six youths sat and looked at her with mute expressions of sons whose filial eyes saw, in the Flower of Yarrow, more beauties of mind and person than even exuberant nature had bestowed; and old Wat himself smiled as he gazed upon her, and finally relinquished his _malice prepense_, which had been urging him forward to ask her for an explanation of what she had said on the previous evening--that Gilmanscleugh would suffice for a portion to the two sons of proud Harden. The parties sat down to the morning meal; and as the old chief took off the cover of the first dish, a loud laugh, in which he heartily joined, announced the fulfilment of the spirited dame's promise of the previous evening, for there was nothing beneath it but a pair of spurs, made of shining Rippon steel, and presenting, in their sharp rowels, little power of assuaging the hunger of the youths, who had been hunting in the neighbouring dells, and could have eat, as the saying goes, the horse behind the saddle. Harden knew the meaning of the manoeuvre; for he recollected the statement of the dame, that she would present to him the feast of spurs, to send him to Gilmanscleugh for a portion to her sons, and, nothing loth to receive the sharp hint,