The Standard Bearer. S. R. Crockett

father been taken?” I cried anxiously to Anna, as she came near. For that was our chief household fear at that time.

      “Nay,” she answered, standing still to look in astonishment at my little companion; “but there are soldiers in the house, and they have turned everything this way and that to seek for him, and have also dealt roughly with my mother.”

      Hearing which, I was for running down to help, but Anna bade me to bide where I was. I would only do harm, she said. She had been sent to keep Hob and David on the hill, my mother being well assured that the soldiers would do her no harm for all the roughness of their talk.

      “And who is this?” said Anna, looking kindly down at little Mary Gordon.

      I expected the little maid to answer as high and quick as she had done to me; but she stood fixed and intent awhile upon Anna, and then she went directly up to her and put her hand into that of my sister. There was ever, indeed, that about Anna which drew all children to her. And now the proud daughter of the laird of Earlstoun went to her as readily as a tottering cottar’s bairn.

      “You will take me to my mother, will you not?” she said, nestling contentedly with her cheek against Anna’s homespun kirtle.

      “That will I, and blithely, lambie!” my sister answered, heartily, “if ye will tell me who the mother o’ ye may be, and where she bides.”

      But when I had told her, I saw Anna look suddenly blank, and the colour fade from her face.

      “By the waterside—your mother!” she said, with a kind of fluttering uncertain apprehension in her voice. For my sister Anna’s voice was like a stringed instrument, quavering and thrilling to the least thought of her heart.

      We three turned to go down the hill to the waterside. I caught Anna’s eye, and, observing by its signalling that she wished to speak with me apart, I allowed the little girl to precede us on the winding sheep track, which was all the path leading up the Bennan side.

      “The soldiers had taken her mother away with them in the boat to question her. They suspected that she came to the water foot to meet her husband,” whispered Anna. “You must take the little one back to her folk—or else, if you are afraid to venture, Hob or David will go instead of you.”

      “Neither Hob nor yet David shall get the chance; I will go myself,” cried I, firing at the notion that my two brothers could carry out such a commission better than I. “If you, Anna, will look to the sheep, I will leave Ashie and Gray behind to help you.”

      “I will indeed gladly stay and see that all is kept in due order,” said Anna, and I knew that she was as good a herd as any one, and that when she undertook a thing she would surely perform it.

      So I took leave of my sister, and she gave me some pieces of barley bread and also a few savoury crumblings she had discovered in the pocket which was swung on the outside of her short kirtle.

      “I will not go with you; I want to stay with this nice great girl, or else go home to my mother!” cried the imperious little maid, stamping her foot and shaking her yellow curls vehemently as if she cherished a spite against me.

      “Your mother has been obliged to go home without you,” I said, “but she has left word that you are to come with me, and I will take you home.”

      “I do not believe it; you are nothing but a little, ragged, silly boy,” she answered, shaking her finger contemptuously at me.

      I appealed to Anna.

      “Is it not so?” I said.

      Anna turned gently to little Mary Gordon.

      “Go with him, childie,” she said; “your mother was compelled to go away and leave you. My brother will bring you safe. Quintin is a good lad and will take great care of you. Let him take you home, will you not?”

      And the child looked long up into the deep, untroubled brown eyes of Anna, my sister, and was vanquished.

      “I will go with the boy anywhere if you bid me,” she said.

      (Note and Addition by me, Hob MacClellan,

       Elder Brother of the Writer.)

      It chances that I, Hob MacClellan, have come into possession of the papers of Quintin, my brother, and also of many interesting documents that belonged to him. In time I shall leave them to his son Quintin, but ere they pass out of my hands it is laid upon me that I insert sundry observes upon them for the better understanding of what Quintin hath written.