When Saunders Mowdiewort heard the last chain drop in the byre, and the strident tones of Jess exhorting Marly, he took a few steps to the gate of the hill pasture.  He had to pass along a short home-made road, and over a low parapetless bridge constructed simply of four tree-trunks laid parallel and covered with turf.  Then he dropped the bars of the gate into the hill pasture with a clatter, which came to Winsome’s ears as she stood at her window looking out into the night.  She was just thinking at that moment what a good thing it was that she had sent back Ralph Peden’s poem.  So, in order to see whether this were so or not, she repeated it all over again to herself.

When he came back again to the end of the barn, Saunders found Jess standing there, with the wistful light in her eyes which that young woman of many accomplishments could summon into them as easily as she could smile.  For Jess was a minx—­there is no denying the fact.  Yet even slow Saunders admitted that, though she was nothing to Meg, of course, still there was something original and attractive about her—­like original sin.

Jess was standing with her head on one side, putting the scarlet head of a poppy among her black hair.  Jess had strange tastes, which would be called artistic nowadays in some circles.  Her liking was always bizarre and excellent, the taste of the primitive Galloway Pict from whom she was descended, or of that picturesque Glenkens warrior, who set a rowan bush on his head on the morning when he was to lead the van at the battle of the Standard.  Scotland was beaten on that great occasion, it is true; but have the chroniclers, who complain of the place of Galloway men in the ranks, thought how much more terribly Scotland might have been beaten had Galloway not led the charge?  But this is written just because Jess Kissock, a Galloway farm lassie, looked something like a cast back to the primitive Pict of the south, a fact which indeed concerns the story not at all, for Saunders Mowdiewort had not so much as ever heard of a Pict.

Jess did not regard Saunders Mowdiewort highly at any time.  He was one of Meg’s admirers, but after all he was a man, and one can never tell.  It was for this reason that she put the scarlet poppy into her hair.

She meditated “I maybe haena Meg’s looks to the notion o’ some folk, but I mak’ a heap better use o’ the looks that I hae, an’ that is a great maitter!”

“Saunders,” said Jess softly, going up to the Cuif and pretending to pick a bit of heather off his courting coat.  She did this with a caressing touch which soothed the widower, and made him wish that Meg would do the like.  He began to think that he had never properly valued Jess.

“Is Meg comin’ oot again?” Jess inquired casually, the scarlet poppy set among the blue-black raven’s wings, and brushing his beard in a distracting manner.

Saunders would hare given a good deal to be able to reply in the affirmative, but Meg had dismissed him curtly after the milking, with the intimation that it was time he was making manseward.  As for her, she was going within doors to put the old folks to bed.