"Gleg-eed mole!" said Mr Cupples. "Luik at the notes as ye ca' them."
"Eh! it's a sang!" exclaimed Alec with delight.
"What cud gar ye think I likit sic havers? The crater was preachin' till's ain shaidow. And he pat me into sic an unchristian temper o' dislike to him and a' the concern, that I ran to my city o' refuge. I never gang to the kirk wi'oot it�-I mean my pocket-buik. And I tried to gie birth till a sang, the quhilk, like Jove, I conceived i' my heid last nicht."
"Lat me luik at it," said Alec, eagerly.
"Na, ye wadna mak' either rhyme or rizzon o' 't as it stan's. I'll read it to ye."
"Come and sit doon, than, on the ither side o' the dyke."
A dyke in Scotland is an earthen fence�-to my prejudiced mind, the ideal of fences; because, for one thing, it never keeps anybody out. And not to speak of the wild bees' bykes in them, with their inexpressible honey, like that of Mount Hymettus�-to the recollection of the man, at least�-they are covered with grass, and wild flowers grow all about them, through which the wind harps and carps over your head, filling your sense with the odours of a little modest yellow tufty flower, for which I never heard a name in Scotland: the English call it Ladies' Bedstraw.
They got over the dyke into the field and sat down.
"Ye see it's no lickit eneuch yet," said Mr Cupples, and began.
"O lassie, ayont the hill!
Come ower the tap o' the hill;
Or roun' the neuk o' the hill;
For I want ye sair the night.
I'm needin' ye sair the nicht,
For I'm tired and sick o' mysel'.
A body's sel' 's the sairest weicht.
O lassie, come ower the hill.