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RV 73 (Rh) fairies? Be here! that I should have named their unlucky names twice ower!'

'Dame Glendinning,' answered the monk, somewhat abruptly, when the good woman had finished her narrative, 'I pray you, do you know the miller's daughter?'

'Did I know Kate Happer?' replied the widow; 'as well as the beggar knows his dish—a canty quean was Kate, and a special cummer of my ain may be twenty years syne.'

'She cannot be the wench I mean,' said Father Eustace; i she after whom I inquire is scarce fifteen, a black-eyed girl; you may have seen her at the kirk.'

'Your reverence must be in the right; and she is my cummer's niece, doubtless, that you are pleased to speak of: But I thank God I have always been too duteous in attention to the mass, to know whether young wenches have black eyes or green ones.'

The good father had so much of the world about him that he was unable to avoid smiling, when the dame boasted her absolute resistance to a temptation which was not quite so liable to beset her as those of the other sex.

'Perhaps, then,' he said, 'you know her usual dress, Dame Glendinning?'

'Aye, aye, father,' answered the dame readily enough, 'a white kirtle the wench wears, to hide the dust of the mill, no doubt; and a blue hood, that might weel be spared, for pridefulness.'

'Then, may it not be she,' said the father, 'who has brought back this book, and stepped out of the way when the children came near her?'

The dame paused—was unwilling to combat the solution suggested by the monk, but was at a loss to conceive why the lass of the mill should come so far from home into so wild a corner merely to leave an old book with three children, from whose observation she wished to conceal herself. Above all, she could not understand why, since she had acquaintances in the family, and since the Dame Glendinning had always paid her multure and knaveship duly, the said lass of the mill had not come in to rest herself and eat a morsel, and tell her the current news of the water.

These very objections satisfied the monk that his conjectures were right. 'Dame,' he said, 'you must be cautious 3