With another unholy shout of derision Wattie was raised and set on the bridge.
"Noo," said the Whaup, standing over him, "let me tell you this, my man. The next time ye gang to my faither, and tell a story about any one o' us, or the next time you say a word against the French lassie, as ye ca' her, do ye ken what I'll do? I'll take ye back to my faither by the lug, and I'll tell him ye were sweerin' like a trooper down by the burn, and every one o' us will testify against you, and then, I'm thinking, it will be your turn to consider paiks."
Catherine Cassilis, "the French lassie," had arrived at the Manse a few weeks before, and she had sore need of a champion.
Andrew Bogue, the ancient henchman of the Rev. Gavin Cassilis, minister of Airlie, who met her at the station, disapproved of her from the first as a foreign jade dressed so that all the men turned and looked at her as if she had been a snare of Satan. Then, had not young Lord Earlshope, after introducing himself, taken a seat in the trap and talked with her in her own language as if he had known her for years?
"They jabbered away in their foreign lingo," said Andrew that evening to his wife Leezibeth, the housekeeper "and I'm thinking it was siccan a language was talked in Sodom and Gomorrah. And he was a' smiles, and she was a' smiles, and they seemed to think nae shame o' themselves goin' through a decent countryside!"
The Whaup himself had said, on the night of Coquette's arrival, "Oh, she's an actress, and I hate actresses!" But before many days had passed, he completely changed that hasty view. The big, sturdy, long-legged lad succumbed to the charms of his parentless cousin--the daughter of the minister's brother, who had settled in France and taken to himself a French wife--and he became her defender against those inhabitants of the Manse and the parish--from his brother Wattie to the pragmatic schoolmaster--whose prejudices she unintentionally outraged.
Even the minister was grieved when Coquette, as her father had called her, made a casual remark about the "last time she had gone to the mass."
"I am deeply pained," said the minister gravely. "I knew not that my brother had been a pervert from the communion of our church."
"Papa was not a Catholic," said Coquette. "Mamma and I were. But it matters nothing. I will go to your church--it is the same to me. I only try to be kind to the people around me--that is all."
"She has got the best part of all religions if she does her best for the people about her," said the Whaup.