SUMMER there had been none. Autumn was a mockery. The golden harvest
fields lay prostrate under drenching floods of rain. Every burn foamed
creamy white in the linns and sulked peaty brown in the pools. The
heather, rich in this our Galloway as an emperor's robe, had scarce
bloomed at all. The very bees went hungry, for the lashing rain had
washed all the honey out of the purple bells.
Nevertheless, in spite of all, we were again in Galloway--that is, the
teller of tales and his little congregation of four. The country of _Guy
Mannering_ spread about us, even though we could scarce see a hundred
yards of it. The children flattened their noses against the blurred
window-panes to look. Their eyes watered with the keen tang of the peat
reek, till, tired with watching the squattering of ducks in farm
puddles, they turned as usual upon the family sagaman, and demanded,
with that militant assurance of youth which succeeds so often, that he
should forthwith and immediately "tell them something."
The tales from _Waverley_ had proved so enthralling that there was a
general demand for "another," and Sir Toady Lion, being of an
arithmetical turn of mind, proclaimed that there was plenty of material,
in so much as he had counted no fewer than twenty-four "all the same"
upon the shelf before he left home.
Thus, encouraged by the dashing rain on the windows and with the low
continual growl of Solway surf in our ears, we bent ourselves to fill a
gap in a hopeless day by the retelling of