"Callum!" he cried sternly, "I will be hearing no more about you and any o' yon low Eerish crew. It is not for my son to be disgracing the MacDonalds after this day's work!"

Callum's face went suddenly white and he rose from the table. "If you mean Nancy Caldwell," he cried, "let me be telling you that I'll marry her if she was the daughter o' the Deil, himself!"

Big Malcolm rose to his feet also, and the two men faced each other fiercely. "The day ye marry any kin to that son o' Belial, Callum MacDonald," he roared, shaking his fist in his son's face, "you will be no more a son of mine!"

Callum laughed harshly, and flung out of doors. Scotty's big heart swelled to bursting. Grandaddy and Callum quarrelling! It was too awful to be believed. He dared not look at Granny's face, for he dreaded what he would see there, but he crept up close to where she sat by the bare table, her face in her hands, her breath coming in long sobs. Granny's heart was breaking, he was sure, and his own heart was breaking, too, for her, and for Callum, and for everyone.

The days that followed did not lighten the misery. Big Malcolm's repentance came over him like a flood of many waters. He left the farm to the care of the boys, and sat in the house, or wandered in the fields, plunged in the deepest humiliation and despair. One look at his wife's sad face would drive him to the barn or the woods, where he would sit, Job-like, and curse the day he was born. Like Job, too, he had three comforters who, though well-meaning and kind, served only to deepen his spiritual gloom. Neither Store Thompson's solemn admonitions nor Praying Donald's hints of stern retribution were calculated to relieve his mind; and when Long Lauchie came across the fields on a Sabbath afternoon to mourn over him and see dire fulfilment of prophecy in his woeful case, he was driven to the verge of desperation.

There was no pleasure at home, and whenever Scotty had an opportunity he went visiting in the direction of Kirsty's. Isabel's companionship afforded him much solace, and through her wonderful ingenuity came at last a way out of his despair.

At first he had been reluctant to confide his troubles even to her; he knew that Granny would speak of them to no one except the one great Comforter, no, not even to Kirsty's mother; so he nursed his mournful secret through one long miserable day. But Isabel's eyes were very bright and soon spied the trouble in Scotty's face. So one day, as they sat on the edge of the old log bridge and swung their feet in the cool, brown water, he opened his heart fully.

To the boy's relief she seemed to think none the less of Callum for wanting to marry an Irish girl. Some Irish people weren't bad, she declared. For her Uncle Walter and Aunt Eleanor were half Irish. Maybe she was some Irish herself, she generously conceded, but, at Scotty's look of incredulous dismay, she hastily concluded that she must be entirely and exclusively Scotch. But there was Danny Murphy, that nice boy who brought her the maple sugar and the butternuts, he was Irish; yes, and old Brian, their coachman, was Irish and said "begorra," and Brian was a dear. And very likely Nancy must be one of the nice Irish, or Callum would not want to marry her. And if they did not let him marry her, then that would be an awful thing, for if Callum failed to appear on the wedding day Nancy would certainly take the heartbreak, like Aunt Eleanor, and be sick forever and ever, and have to lie for days in a dark room and have headaches and nasty medicine.

Scotty's heart was wrung at the awful prospect. Was Isabel sure? Why, of course, she knew all about heartbreak and disappointments and such things. Scotty declared desperately that something must be done. And without an instant's meditation Isabel burst forth with the brilliant suggestion—why could they not take their pirate ship, sail down the Oro to the Flats and carry Nancy off bodily?

Scotty was dazzled. This was a thrilling project, entailing, as it did, an adventure in their wonderful vessel. For some time before the close of school he and Danny Murphy had been copartners in a tremendous secret enterprise. Down in the green tunnel made by the "Birch Crick," where it foamed along through a tangle of timber and underbrush, until it found its way into the Oro, they had discovered, early that spring, a derelict punt. This craft had come like an answer to prayer; they had patched it up, launched it, and, before the holidays, had spent aboard its rotten timbers days of perfectly abandoned joy. Several times, indeed, they had made adventurous voyages out upon the Oro itself, and had had hairbreadth escapes, for the vessel leaked and accidents were frequent. But every boy of Number Nine school was an amphibious animal, and such small things as shipwrecks mattered little. With the close of school these happy excursions had to be given up. Only once had the boys been on a voyage since, and then Isabel had accompanied them, and they had not gone far. But here was a chance to go on a wonderful tour. They would sail down to the Flats and steal Nancy; perhaps they would even take a voyage down to Lake Simcoe and away out upon the Atlantic Ocean and have fights with pirates and Fenians. Scotty's ambition was fired to be away at once, but there was one trouble—Isabel herself. She was all right at home, but her habit of hanging on to his coat with both hands when danger threatened would be embarrassing in public, and he did not even dare to think what Danny would say if he saw him in such a disgraceful plight. And then he conceived the rest of the brilliant plan himself. They would not steal Nancy away this time, but they would go to the Birch Crick, and if Danny was there they would send a message by him to Nancy, asking her if she would not like to be kidnapped, and he mentally resolved that Isabel could be put off while he and Danny performed the glorious deed.