Chapter 24 - Page 2

her words and flung them in the air, making sport of her.

She wandered westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a
great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit
and muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys--a kind
of horse--and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery
dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged
laddies dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in
the dyke that separates the hill from a fir wood, and it is the
fairy-book of Thrums. If you would be a knight yourself, you must
sit on it and whisper to it your desire.

Babbie came to the Standing Stone, and there was a little boy
astride it. His hair stood up through holes in his bonnet, and he
was very ragged and miserable.

"Why are you crying, little boy?" Babbie asked him, gently; but he
did not look up, and the tongue was strange to him.

"How are you greeting so sair?" she asked.

"I'm no greeting very sair," he answered, turning his head from
her that a woman might not see his tears. "I'm no greeting so sair
but what I grat sairer when my mither died."

"When did she die?" Babbie inquired.

"Lang syne," he answered, still with averted face.

"What is your name?"

"Micah is my name. Rob Dow's my father."

"And have you no brothers nor sisters?" asked Babbie, with a
fellow-feeling for him.

"No, juist my father," he said.

"You should be the better laddie to him then. Did your mither no
tell you to be that afore she died?"

"Ay," he answered, "she telled me ay to hide the bottle frae him
when I could get haed o't. She took me into the bed to make me
promise that, and syne she died."

"Does your father drina?"

"He hauds mair than ony other man in Thrums," Micah replied,
almost proudly.

"And he strikes you?" Babbie asked, compassionately.

"That's a lie," retorted the boy, fiercely. "Leastwise, he doesna
strike me except when he's mortal, and syne I can jouk him."

"What are you doing there?"

"I'm wishing. It's a wishing stane."

"You are wishing your father wouldna drink."

"No, I'm no," answered Micah. "There was a lang time he didna
drink, but the woman has sent him to it again. It's about her I'm
wishing. I'm wishing she was in hell."

"What woman is it?" asked Babbie, shuddering.

"I dinna ken," Micah said, "but she's an ill ane."

"Did you never see her at your