Chapter 13 - Page 2

fellowship and neighbourly friendship,--under colour of which he made
his annual cruise through the barony--numbered every corn-stack, and
computed its contents by the boll, so that he could give a shrewd hint
afterwards whether or not the grist came to the right mill.

Dame Elspeth, like her compeers, was obliged to take these domiciliary
visits in the sense of politeness; but in her case they had not
occurred since her husband's death, probably because the Tower of
Glendearg was distant, and there was but a trifling quantity of arable
or _infield_ land attached to it. This year there had been, upon
some speculation of old Martin's, several bolls sown in the
exit-field, which, the season being fine, had ripened remarkably well.
Perhaps this circumstance occasioned the honest Miller's including
Glendearg, on this occasion, in his annual round Dame Glendinning
received with pleasure a visit which she used formerly only to endure
with patience; and she had changed her view of the matter chiefly, if
not entirely, because Hob had brought with him his daughter Mysie, of
whose features she could give so slight an account, but whose dress
she had described so accurately to the Sub-Prior.

Hitherto this girl had been an object of very trifling consideration
in the eyes of the good widow; but the Sub-Prior's particular and
somewhat mysterious inquiries had set her brains to work on the
subject of Mysie of the Mill; and she had here asked a broad question,
and there she had thrown out an innuendo, and there again she had
gradually led on to a conversation on the subject of poor Mysie. And
from all inquiries and investigations she had collected, that Mysie
was a dark-eyed, laughter-loving wench, with cherry-cheeks, and a skin
as white as her father's finest bolted flour, out of which was made
the Abbot's own wastel-bread. For her temper, she sung and laughed
from morning to night; and for her fortune, a material article,
besides that which the Miller might have amassed by means of his
proverbial golden thumb, Mysie was to inherit a good handsome lump of
land, with a prospect of the mill and mill-acres descending to her
husband on an easy lease, if a fair word were spoken in season to the
Abbot, and to the Prior, and to the Sub-Prior, and to the Sacristan,
and so forth.

By turning and again turning these advantages over in her own mind,
Elspeth at length came to be of opinion, that the only way to save her
son Halbert from a life of "spur, spear, and snaffle," as they called
that of the border-riders, from the dint of a cloth-yard shaft, or the
loop of an inch-cord, was, that he should marry and settle, and that
Mysie Happer should be his destined bride.

As if to her wish, Hob Miller