One lovely evening in October, when the shadows were falling from the western sun, and the light that made them was as yellow as a marigold, and a keen little wind was just getting ready to come out and blow the moment the sun would be out of sight, Annie, who was helping to fasten up the cows for the night, drawing iron chains round their soft necks, saw a long shadow coming in at the narrow entrance of the yard.

It came in and in; and was so long in coming in, that she began to feel as if it was something not quite _cannie_, and to fancy herself frightened.
But, at length, she found that the cause of the great shadow was only a little man; and that this little man was no other than her father's cousin, Robert Bruce.

Alas! how little a man may cast a great shadow! He came up to Annie, and addressed her in the smoothest voice he could find, fumbling at the same time in his coat-pocket.
"Hoo are ye the nicht dawtie?
Are ye verra weel?
An' hoo's yer auntie ?" He waited for no reply to any of these questions, but went on.
"See what I hae brocht ye frae the chop." So saying, he put into her hand about half-a-dozen _sweeties_, screwed up in a bit of paper.

With this gift he left her, and walked on to the open door of the house, which, as a cousin, he considered himself privileged to enter unannounced even by a knock.

He found the mistress of it in the kitchen, superintending the cooking of the supper.
"Hoo are ye the nicht, Marget ?" he said, still in a tone of conciliatory smoothness, through which, however, he could not prevent a certain hardness from cropping out plentifully.