The Grey Man

by S. R. Crockett

'Haud your tongue, guidman. Have some mense afore the young man, for he looks a sober chiel and blate. What should he have to do with lasses? At his years!'

Here Nell Kennedy broke out in peal on peal of laughter, and when they asked her the reason,—

'It was but at Launcelot's face when my lady praises him for being blate. He looks as innocent as our grey cat Grimalkin, when she has eaten all the fish for supper.'

I wish that I could dwell longer on these sweet, peaceful days in Galloway, but the spring went on apace, and Sir Thomas was summoned back to Culzean. His nephew the Earl urgently needed his advice, and wrote to him to say so.

'The Earl makes you many compliments,' said the Lady Lochnaw.

'Ay, ay,' said Culzean, 'Earl John was aye a great spender with his tongue, even as was the daddy of him.'

So we were bound to ride away from this kindly and merry house of Lochnaw, and much did I desire to return thither. Never once did we speak of wars and stratagems while we remained under that roof, but all of friendship, of lusty daffing, and of leasome love.

But when we mounted I bade farewell to all with a wae heart. I envied the Sheriff greatly, for he had a wife whom he loved in age as in youth, and yet whom he knew wherein to be the master of—a thing, I take it, which makes home happier than all besides. I thought within me that Patrick, his son, had set himself a harder field to plough in his Marget. Yea, already methought he had let the reins slip from his hands—which, after all, is no strange thing, considering that she was own sister to Marjorie and Nell Kennedy, of whose stiff necks I had oft had experience.

Ere we went, the Sheriff said a word that amused us all. 'When I came to be Sheriff,' he said, 'I found my father at the horn, outlaw and rebel, for refusing to pay teinds to cover the back of a bishop's lady with silks and satins. And when I die it looks like that I shall see my son at the horn for cleading of his wife according to the degree of a queen.'

For young Patrick Agnew liked better than all to be for ever gadding about after the merchants of France and the Low Countries, who knew his weakness so well that they would come from far to sell him stuff for the decking of his lady—who, when all was said and done, was nothing to compare to Nell or even to Marjorie, her younger sisters.