CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

      "Hello, Davie! Is that you, Davie Sim?" cried a joyous young voice; then it changed suddenly, with a verve which showed pure delight in the unfamiliar yet familiar dialect, from correct English to the broadest Aberdeenshire accent. "Eh, mon, ye're joost the same ow'd tod o' a pease-bogle wi' yer bonnet ajee, an' a crookit mou'; yen hauf given tae psaulm singin' and tither tae pipe-blawing!" The voice paused a bit breathlessly as if it had exhausted itself over the unwonted exercise, then went on in slightly less aggressive Doric. "Well, I'm blythe to see you lookin' sae weel. An' is that tall lass Marrion?"

      An easy gallantry came to his tones as the speaker, a fine young fellow of obviously military bearing, turned to a girl who stood very still by the window.

      "By gad," the young man went on with the same easy condescension, "you have grown into a pretty girl! Give us a kiss, my dear; you know you used to be fond of 'Mr. Duke' in the----"

      Then suddenly silence fell between the two young people. Something in the tall still figure by the window seemed to abash the tall figure making its way easily towards it, and left them looking at each other critically.

      They were as fine a couple physically as God ever made to come together as man and woman. They were almost alike in stature and strength--she slightly the smaller--and both seemed equal in abounding health, though he was florid and she somewhat pale with the pallor of the thick creamy skin that goes with red-bronze hair.

      She spoke at last, the thin curves of her mouth clipping her words sharply.

      "There's mony to tell me yon and crave kisses since you an' me was hafflins together, Mr. Duke," she said coolly. "I beg yer pardon, Captain Marmaduke!"

      The Honourable Captain Marmaduke Muir, second son of the sixteenth Baron Drummuir of Drummuir, home on leave after an absence of ten years on foreign service, looked at the grand-daughter of his father's head piper and general majordomo as if considering anger. He was too good looking to be accustomed to such rebuffs from pretty girls, especially when they were manifestly beneath him in station. Then suddenly he laughed. The years had fled, and he was a boy again in fast fellowship with a small hoyden of a girl; a girl four years his junior, but infinitely his superior in common sense; a girl who had kept him out of many a scrape and who hadn't scrupled on occasion to box his ears, young master though he was. With a sudden flash of memory the occasion came back to him, and he saw himself, a strong lad of fourteen, wading a swollen stream with the ten-year-old girlie on his back, a string of handsome trouties he had been catching hanging like a tail from his hands clasped behind his burden. He heard the agonised cry in mid-stream, "They're slippin', Maister Duke, they're slippin'! Let me down till I hoosen them up!" He heard the stiff reply: "Let 'em slip; I'll no let ye down tae soak ye through!" And then the woeful battle of wills that ensued, while the trouties slipped from the string one by one. A battle which ended in a sobbing girlie ankle deep in water, an empty string, and a defiant lad with young crimson ears. He felt his mature ones tingle with amusement at the recollection, and at the recognition that the girlie was as ready of resentment as ever.

      "Ods bobs, Marmie!" he cried, his face full of mischief. "It seems you've no forgotten the whaur-aboots of my lugs," and his hands went up to his face as if to protect them.

      The