COQUETTE'S ARRIVAL.

The tide of battle had flowed onward from the village to the Manse. The retreating party, consisting of the Minister's five sons, were driven back by force of numbers, contesting every inch of the ground. Hope had deserted them; and there now remained to them but the one chance—to reach the fortress of the Manse in safety, and seek the shelter of its great stone wall.

The enemy numbered over a dozen; and the clangour and clamour of the pursuit waxed stronger as they pressed on the small and compact body of five. The weapons on both sides were stones picked up from the moorland road; and the terrible aim of the Whaup—the eldest of the Minister's boys—had disfigured more than one mother's son of the turbulent crowd that pursued. He alone—a long-legged Herculean lad of eighteen—kept in front of his retreating brothers, facing the foe boldly, and directing his swift, successive discharges with a deadly accuracy of curve upon the noses of the foremost. But his valour was of no avail. All seemed over. Their courage began to partake of the recklessness of despair. Nature seemed to sympathise with this disastrous fate; and to the excited eyes of the fugitives it appeared that the sun was overcast—that the moor around was blacker and more silent than ever—and that the far stretch of the sea, with the gloomy hills of Arran, had grown dark as if with a coming storm. Thus does the human mind confer an anthropomorphic sentiment on all things, animate and inanimate: a profound observation which occurred to Mr. Gillespie, the Schoolmaster, who, being on one occasion in the town of Ayr, when horse-racing or some such godless diversion was going forward, and having, in a very small and crowded hostelry, meekly enquired for some boiled eggs, was thus indignantly remonstrated with by the young woman in charge: "Losh bless me! Do ye think the hens can remember to lay eggs in all this bustle and hurry!"

Finally, the retreating party turned and ran—ignominiously, pell-mell—until they had gained the high stone wall surrounding the Manse. They darted into the garden, slammed the door to, and barricaded it; the Whaup sending up a peal of defiant laughter that made the solemn echoes of the old-fashioned house ring again. Outside this shriek of joy was taken as a challenge; and the party on the other side of the wall returned a roar of mingled mockery and anger which was not pleasant to hear. It meant a blockade and bombardment; with perhaps a fierce assault when the patience of the besiegers should give way. But the Whaup was not of a kind to indulge in indolent security when his enemies were murmuring hard by. In an incredibly short space of time he and his brothers had wheeled up to the wall a couple of empty barrels, and across these was hurriedly thrown a broad plank. The Whaup filled his hands with the gravel of the garden walk, and jumped up on the board. The instant that his head appeared above the wall, there was a yell of execration. He had just time to discharge his two handfuls of gravel upon the besiegers, when a shower of stones was directed at him, and he ducked his head.

"This is famous!" he cried. "This is grand! It beats Josephus! Mair gravel, Jock—mair gravel, Jock!"

Now, in the Manse of Airlie, there was an edition of Josephus' works, in several volumes, which was the only profane reading allowed to the boys on Sunday. Consequently it was much studied—especially the plates of it; and one of these plates represented the siege of Jerusalem, with the Romans being killed by stones thrown from the wall. No sooner, therefore, had the Whaup mounted on the empty barrels, than his brothers recognised the position. They were called upon to engage in a species of warfare familiar to them. They formed themselves into line, and handed up to the Whaup successive supplies of stones and gravel, with a precision they could not have exceeded had they actually served in one of the legions of Titus.

The Whaup, however, dared not discharge his ammunition with regularity. He had to descend to feints; for he was in a most perilous position, and might at any moment have had his head rendered amorphous. He therefore from time to time showed his hand over the wall; the expected volley of stones followed; and then he sprang up to return the compliment with all his might. Howls of rage greeted each of his efforts; and, indeed, the turmoil rose to an extraordinary pitch. The besiegers were furious. They were in an open position, while their foe was well intrenched; and no man can get a handful of gravel pitched into his face, and also preserve his temper. Revenge was out of the question. The sagacious Whaup never appeared when they expected him; and when he did appear, it was an instantaneous up and down, giving them no chance at all of doing him an injury. They raved and stormed; and the more bitterly they shouted names at him, and the more fiercely they heaped insults upon him, the more joyously he laughed. The noise, without and within, was appalling; never, in the memory of man, had such an uproar resounded around the quiet Manse of Airlie.

Suddenly there was a scared silence within the walls, and a rapid disappearance of the younger of the besieged.

"Oh, Tam, here's faither!" cried one.

But Tam—elsewhere named the Whaup—was too excited to hear. He was shouting and laughing, hurling gravel and stones at his enemies, when——

When a tall, stern-faced, gray-haired man, who wore a rusty black coat and a white neckcloth, and who bore in his hand, ominously, a horsewhip, walked firmly and sedately across the garden. The hero of the day was still on the barrels, taunting his foes, and helping himself to the store of ammunition which his colleagues had piled upon the plank.

"Who's lang-leggit now? Where are the Minister's chickens now? Why dinna you go and wash your noses in the burn?"

The next moment the Whaup uttered what can only be described as a squeal. He had not been expecting an attack from the rear; and there was fright as well as pain in the yell which followed the startling cut across the legs which brought him down. In fact, the lithe curl of the whip round his calves was at once a mystery and a horror; and he tumbled rather than jumped from the plank, only to find himself confronted by his father, whose threatening eye and terrible voice soon explained the mystery.

"How daur ye, sir," exclaimed Mr. Cassilis, "how daur ye, sir, transform my house into a Bedlam! For shame, sir, that your years have brought ye no more sense than to caper wi' a lot of schoolboys. Have ye no more respect for yourself—have ye no more respect for the college you have come home from—than to behave yourself like a farm-callant, and make yourself the byword of the neighbourhood? You are worse than the youngest in the house——"

"I didn't know you were in the Manse," said the Whaup, wondering whither his brothers had run.

"So much the worse—so much the worse," said the Minister, severely, "that ye have no better guide to your conduct than the fear o' being caught. Why, sir, when I was your age, I was busier with my Greek Testament than with flinging names at a wheen laddies!"

"It was mair than names, as ye might hae seen," remarked the Whaup, confidently.

Indeed, he was incorrigible, and the Minister turned away. His eldest son had plenty of brains, plenty of courage, and an excellent physique; but he could not be brought to acquire a sense of the proper gravity or duties of manhood, nor yet could he be prevailed on to lay aside the mischievous tricks of his youth. He was the terror of the parish. It was hoped that a winter at Glasgow University would tame down the Whaup; but he returned to Airlie worse than ever, and formed his innocent brothers into a regular band of marauders, of whom all honest people were afraid. The long-legged daredevil of the Manse, with his boldness, his cunning, and his agility, left neither garden, nor farmyard, nor kitchen alone. Worthy villagers were tripped up by bits of invisible twine. Mysterious knocks on the window woke them at the dead of night. When they were surprised that the patience of their sitting hen did not meet with its usual reward, they found that chalk eggs had been substituted for the natural ones. Their cats came home with walnut-shells on their feet. Stable doors were unaccountably opened. Furious bulls were found lassoed, so that no man dare approach them. The work of the Whaup was everywhere evident—it was always the Whaup. And then that young gentleman would come quietly into the villagers' houses, and chat pleasantly with them, and confide to them his great grief that his younger brother, Wattie—notwithstanding that people thought him a quiet, harmless, pious, and rather sneaking boy—was such a desperate hand for mischief. Some believed him; others reproached him for his wickedness in blaming his own sins upon the only one of the Minister's family who had an appearance of Christian humility and grace.

When the Minister had gone into the house, the Whaup—in nowise downcast by his recent misfortune, although he still was aware of an odd sensation about the legs—mounted once more upon the barrels to reconnoitre the enemy. He had no wish to renew the fight; for Saturday was his father's day for study and meditation; no stir or sound was allowed in the place from morning till night; and certainly, had the young gentlemen of the Manse known that their father was indoors, they would have let the village boys rave outside in safety. Cool and confident as he was, the Whaup did not care to bring his father out a second time; and so he got up on the barricades merely for the sake of information.

The turmoil had evidently quieted down, partly through the ignominious silence of the besieged, and partly through the appearance of a new object of public attention. The heads of the dozen lads outside were now turned towards the village, whence there was seen coming along the road the Minister's dog-cart, driven by his ancient henchman, Andrew Bogue. Beside the driver sat some fair creature in fluttering white and yellow—an apparition that seldom met the vision of the inhabitants of Airlie. The Whaup knew that this young lady was his cousin from France, who was now, being an orphan, and having completed her education, coming to live at the Manse. But who was the gentleman behind, who sat with his arm flung carelessly over the bar, while he smiled and chatted to the girl, who had half turned round to listen to him?

"Why, it is Lord Earlshope," said the Whaup, with his handsome face suddenly assuming a frown. "What business has Earlshope to talk to my cousin?"

Presently the gentleman let himself down from the dog-cart, took off his hat to her who had been his companion, and turned and went along the road again. The dog-cart drove up to the door. The Whaup, daring his enemies to touch him, went out boldly, and proceeded to welcome the new-comer to Airlie.

"I suppose you are my cousin," he said.

"I suppose I am," said the young girl, speaking with an accent so markedly French that he looked at her in astonishment. But then she, in turn, regarded him for a moment with a pair of soft dark eyes, and he forgot her accent. He vaguely knew that she had smiled to him; and that the effect of the smile was rather bewildering—as he assisted her down from the dog-cart, and begged her to come in through the garden.