Even Hob himself began to
tire of hearing his daughter's praises, and broke in with, "Ay, ay,
she is a clever quean enough; and, were she five years older, she
shall lay a loaded sack on an _aver_ [Note: _Aver_--properly
a horse of labour.] with e'er a lass in the Halidome. But I have been
looking for your two sons, dame. Men say downby that Halbert's turned
a wild springald, and that we may have word of him from Westmoreland
one moonlight night or another."
"God forbid, my good neighbour; God, in his mercy, forbid!" said Dame
Glendinning, earnestly; for it was touching the very key-note of her
apprehensions, to hint any probability that Halbert might become one
of the marauders so common in the age and country. But, fearful of
having betrayed too much alarm on this subject, she immediately added,
"That though, since the last rout at Pinkiecleuch, she had been all of
a tremble when a gun or a spear was named, or when men spoke of
fighting; yet, thanks to God and our Lady, her sons were like to live
and die honest and peaceful tenants to the Abbey, as their father
might have done, but for that awful hosting which he went forth to
with mony a brave man that never returned."
"Ye need not tell me of it, dame," said the Miller, "since I was there
myself, and made two pair of legs (and these were not mine, but my
mare's,) worth one pair of hands. I judged how it would be, when I saw
our host break ranks, with rushing on through that broken ploughed
field, and so as they had made a pricker of me, I e'en pricked off
with myself while the play was good.
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