CHAPTER VII. THE SHADOW OF GRANTON DEEPENS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2493, 25 December 1901, Page 15 (Supplement)

CHAPTER VII. THE SHADOW OF GRANTON DEEPENS.

The Reverend Sydney Camper had just arrived at Granton. He had greeted the household in a large, expansive way, and was now conducted by Harry with all ceremony to the primitive guest chamber of the little homestead, known as the Cell. "Goodness me," said Ailsa, in an undertone, "what a tight fit ' he will find the Cell ! One sees at a glance that his is the piety that flourishes best in lofty domes and flowing vestments." ! "If you ask me," remarked Mr Stormont, discontentedly, "it's the ' piety that has a keen eye for horseflesh. He hadn't dismounted before he wanted to <lo a. deal with me for Taniwha. I really don't ! know how I'm going to offer him Old Dodger to morrow. If I swear the other horses are lame or girth-galled, he's quite ready to play the - vet. at his own fee. If I w ere to rifle his valise, it's an even chance that I'd find a Bell's Life and a blister where you would look for a Bible and a hair shirt." I Marion answered immediately : "' You are just playing a game of Corban, and the Canterbuiy ; Levite knows the tricks of his own." " But hang it all. Mrs N etherby, can't you allow a man a little natural affection for his horse, for any horse that is worth his salt' ■ It's not Corban, its mercy. '" Hush, the Levite approaches ; and truly his countenance illuminethe house like a red Chinese lantern," whispered Ailvi The Reverend Sydney Camper certainly gave no outw aid indication o e any partiality for hair-shuts and lenttn soup. After a brief grace, . m( j j n which rolled off the tongue with sonorous celerit\ . he attacked Mi<- flutterHuggms's masterpiece, a Miiokmg " Ballarat Goose," with an appetite < () u , me n*- t i calculated to disarm all worldly awe of his sacerdotal functions. e T .- i 1 ■ "This is kapai. Mi Xetherby." he said, with a pondeious ahine^ 'Thank v<, ' T 1 .f1 all his own. "A pooi paixon gets a few odd experiences in the back stoo j •, n J ai , AH "~'>>"i) LAKE "WAKATIF blocks. Last week I got benighted at a shepherd's hut on account of Salamander ' ° « cl-nstening I nevei in my life saw such a poor cieature as that "' . n dU thp same t() shepherds w.fewa. ,be thought .lie had blunged, and said :- •' Ah, yes, what ternblv hard and lonely lives tne«e women must <n k,,+ > j. ™ „,',..,■ ' v - but you re not a Roman, are you? lead, murmured Ailsa. , , M , , T „„ v i j- • -i i 4. ■ - i *. i ' °' m - v ° uod fl " on i'in- I -^"d, Tm neither Greek nor Roman Ihe burly d.v.ne smiled patron.singly at her , but ft desperately hu^ vy Knwli , hman , Komdl1 ' •• My dear young lady, you mustn't suppose they feel the life as , ■ She was an eternity frvU]g thoge chop& _ Twice dr d thg jou would; the back is fitted to the burden, you know." I frying pan and wh t „ , ,

i the other red. I supped with fear and caution, gmteful for once to the ? odoriferous slush lamp under our noses ; doubttul viands taste better in the dark.'" v " Kxdctly,"' s.nd Mr Stormont, coldly, " and if someone kindly held ' 3 our nose as well, you wouldn't know weka fiom \enison." "Ah,'' said Mr Camper, with a lingenng intonation of leverence, v "you and I, Mrs X'etherbv, know what we have lost; you were B born in the Land of Venison, and I — ha\e dined there. Still, Xew Zealand lms mutton that reconciles a man to exile, if only — you know c the French proverb — if only the potentate in qutstion had not staffed the country with his own cooki ; the Grantoti aitist being a notable ~ exception." "Let me give you another slice; it's no tuHe riding fiom Bromley pi an afternoon," hospit.illy urged Harry "If you please. Ride, did you say? The ride would have been ■i trifle if the animal had been up to pai. Tint I had to get off once and survey it from all points to make sure they hadn't given me the e'othes hoise by mistake. I thought of S.hillki Panza riding the wooden horse blindfold: but. alack ' I couldn't say with him, 'An easier paced beast I never rode in my life.' " AiKa shot a wicked glance at each squatter in turn Mr Stormont coughed uneasily, and Hairy muttered ;<n nieleva.nt hope for '"good shearing weather to-morrow." But the divine clung perversely to the unw elcome topic. '"Yes," lie said, with swelling disapproval, "a clothes horse seesawed between two lopes, and bumping haid every time: that's- the sort of mount they keep at Bromley." Mr Stormont grasped the nettle with a bnlli.mt mspiiation. "A — who won the Derby the ye.v you left Home, Mi C'ampei ?"' he asked, with ingenuous interest. " Liimmington with \leny Thought." ™,is tho it-ply, mutant .is a pistol shot. The crisis passed safely on the flood of lecollection induced by the name of the immort.il Meny Thought. Later on, during the lepast, his thoughts returned to Xew Zealand with lestored good j humour. "Yes." he began, with a reflective smile, "theie is variety both in chops and congregation 5 !, as one gets them in the back country. The lady of the slush lamp was what you might call the humble hearer, but down the river last week I met with a doughty pecimen of the bellicose hearer — an old Scotch woman, who mssed her regulation three hours of brimstone, and gave me a piece of her mind after service was over ' Releegion ' ' she said, ' ye've na releegion ava' ; it's juist a caper up a-nd a caper doon again, Avi' your nose in the bookie, like a hen wi' her neb in a mealpock ! A' the milk o' the Word I've tasted the day wadna fatten a midge ! " " Mr Camper roundly led the laugh against himself, and vent on : " A Dissenter's a Dissenter all the world over, you see. They're the jelly-fish of the churches, without form and without backbone. Pick your Dissenter out of an English ditch or a New Zealand swamp, his priestly ideal is the same — the skin of a man stuffed with emotions and texts, and certified a born ninny on all earthly matters whatever. They won't admit that emotion without a channel to hold it, runs away like water in sand, or that a church's business is to construct a channel, to eiect a vast vertebrate foundation for individual muscle to grow on, so to speak." "0," said Marion, with faintly heightened colour, " a vertebrate foundation — that's a skeleton, isn't it? One lives and learns. We used to take quite another moral out of Ezekiel's field of the dry bones. Plainly, then, it is the symbol of a flourishing church."' But Mr Camper was not to be drown out of cover. ''My dear Mis Xetheiby. you are a very Pottia of divinity. And may I add that a our cook is a doctor of pastry-making"' Yes, if you please, one more tartlet." A magnificent figure, and fiimly vertebrate, wauie Reverend Sydney Campf-r in canonical vestments, as he faced the motley congregation assembled that night in the Granton parlour All the shearers were there, induding the Dingo, as the Australian cattle duffer had been :alled by the station, on account of some specially faith-trying og stories of his native land, which he had related with much circumstance in the hut. The Huggins-es were there, stolid ■'" A ; shepherds, cowboys, and Long Jimmy aking up the tale, with the 'lousehold. Most were listening with attention, but Ailsa, hyper-sensitive to such influences. grew hot under the leering malevolence of the Dingo's stare ; a stare which she felt, rather than saw . included Mr Stormont, who was sitting at her right hand. She Avas angry Avith her wandering thoughts, Avhich would recall, during the read prayers, other scenes thioughout the past Aveek w hen the same look had follow ed them. Once, in a shy. side glance, she caught the shadow of a frown on Olivei Ntoinvint's face, and AAondeied with a start whether he. too. had noted the insolence ot the man's regard. She knew th.it the Dingo— a tast. but ciuelly i neless shearer — had provoked h >. angei moie than once already. A sonorous, if suspi ClO usl\ fluent, discourse concluded the service As they filed out. the man from Biomley spoke approvingly to the Granton guide appointed for the morrow. "Yon's a good sermon, after all. You need to hear it twice, and get the hang of his argument. You listen to-morrow night, Ben, and you'll see it groAvs on a-ou." For the Reverend Sydney Camper's economy of labour in sermonAvriting was well knoAvn in the Canterbury gorges of his vast pastorate.

Next morning Molly Huggins was christened in the pretty white dress — her godmother's gift. Mr Camper slightly hurried the service, as a storm was lowering in the ranges, and his next station of call was 20 miles away. As he walked to the stable with Mr Stormont, he vainly renewed his offer for Taniwha. The divine looked at Old Dodger, caparisoned and led forth by Long Jimmy, and he sniffed. Mischief was in his eye, but his tone was dulcet. " Come, I'll go another two pound ten, and throw in the marriage fee." "Throw in what?" said the startled squatter. "My dear fellow, I'll spare your boyish blushes, but you'll allow a poor parson to keep an eye in his head, I .vuppose. I shall expect to hear from you shortly." "You'll hear from me now, that of all the confounded nonsense — " He stopped, plainly for lack of words, not lack of fire. The loss of Taniwha rankled deep in the saintly man's mind ; he was surprised and delighted to have made a raw spot so easily. "Keep calm, my dear Stormont. You've been in my spiritual charge now for five years, and it is my duty to note that, for a professed woman hater, you have just begun to show a pretty taste in ties. Also, your drawing-room demeanour formerly suggested Boanerges ; now a sucking dove would seem a rampagious creature in company with you. Also, it is the first time I've seen you look at a lady as I've seen you look at aj moa-bone — not that Miss Drummond is not better to look at than a live moa itself. This is a fairly weighty chain of circumstantial evidence, you must admit." Mr Stormont' s deep annoyance at this broad banter was nowise lessened by suddenly observing the leering face of the Dingo, who had come up close behind them, and was ostentatiously questioning Long Jimmy about a lost sharpening stone. After a stiff adieu to his ghostly adviser, the squatter curtly ordered Taniwha to be caught and saddled ; then turned away in a quick, moody walk by the creek. He was too occupied with his thoughts to notice some unusual sounds, as of falling benches, from the hut, till his partner joined him, looking rather flurried. " Black luck we're having, Stormont ; wet sheep and men in mischief. There's been no end of a shindy in the hut. I thought they sounded a trifle lively even at breakfast time. Rory Macintosh has given me the whole history of the thing. Whisky and the Dingo are at the bottom of it all." Mr Stormont took the news with almost a look of relief. " The Dingo ! That fellow has been smoke to sore eyes since the hour he came. I'll settle his hash now, and chance it. Where's Rory Macintosh? " Half an hour later, Mr Stormont finished a brief, sultry interview with the offender by throwing a cheque at him, and saying: — " Now, make tracks. You know Granton rules and you know me. Be off before I tie you up in a granny knot and throw you over the woolshed roof." The bridle was already on the Australian nomad's arm ; he turned at once, only pausing to say with a grin. "So long, Mr Stormont ; we'll meet again later on." As he saddled his horse, he hugged himself in a sort of angry rapture: — "I know him? Don't 1? Better than you reckon, my fine boss of Granton ! Dashed if I know how I kept it from rolling off the tip of my tongue. — ' Say, mister, did you ever see a place called Nuggety Creek? ' But it'll keep, it'll keep with the rest." All memory of the Dingo was wiped off Oliver Stormont's mind as he took the hill way on Taniwha, riding as a man who would leave a ghost behind him. But the ghost that haunted him could neither be laid nor left behind. Again and again he muttered to himself: — " ' Like a moa-bone ' — confound his impudence ! And yet, 0, heaven ! it's true. I love the .child, and what's to be done' What's to be done?" Late in the afternoon he rode back, and this time he said : — " There's nothing to be done, only drift and be quiet, drift and be quiet." He reiterated this in the aggressive tone occasionally used by an honest man, toughly arguing a matter with his conscience. "Yes, drift and be quiet," he repeated. "It's plain I'm not the sort of Apollo to make any trouble for her, and yet — if only — who knows what pioneer grit and patience might have won 9 It wouldn't have been fair, perhaps — a sort of Miranda business without Ferdinand — and I should have had to wait a year or two, anyway, till she had forgotten what other men were like. You everlasting ass ! what's the good of thinking about that? Drift and be quiet, that's all." Slowly he unsaddled Taniwha, and went in. He felt he must delay meeting with the household ; his face was too much of an open page after the self-communing of the hill. He beguiled this season of shyness by making an unwontedly elaborate toilet. " Pshaw ! " he laughed, surveying himself at last. " I'm turning into a girl, surely. All this sweetness for the desert air, Oliver ! Who's going to look at your tanned phiz, I'd like to know? " Lightly he crossed the grass plot outside. As he neared the bouse again, Ailsa sat alone at the window, absorbed in a book, with

her back to the light. Glancing sideways, he saw it was a tough oi an invisible rope. Then, like an arrow he went down the poplar volume of scientific research, belonging to himself, and anything walk, a way the rope pulled not. His face was very glad at first, but but after the wonted style of Miss Dnimmond's reading Glancing an hour later, when he came back, it was sombre enough, sideways again, he found that Miss Drummond's mind was little likely The air of the house seemed magnetic that night. Mr Stoimont to benefit by the said volume, since onl\ perused the fly-leaf on absently carved his potatoes into diamond shapes, which he did not eat Ailsa's every movement was the subdued flutter of a bird. Harry was ill at ea-se, and' Marion — but who could i.ithom Marion? When the table was cleared, and AiKa had left the room for a feu m mites, Mr Ntoimont said, nervously : "Hairy, I'm in a huiry to see the -heaiingthrough They'll cut out by Friday. 1 fancy. If they do, I leave on Saturday to join Hurrodaile on his Nelson trip." Marion turned quick I\ , with a blight -«pot on her cheek. "So soon?" .she said, haughtily, then bit her lip "By all means," said Hairy, "I wouldn't wait even if they don't cut out by then ; don't spoil 1 the trip." In his new-born sensitiveness this amiable readiness of his partner was bitterly lesented by thesquatter. He had a quite illogical longing tcbe reasoned with, to be scolded for leaving duty '" There's one thing I can tell you," he said, shortly, " see to the fences in the back country, and have the autumn muster in time Borrodaile says that the Maoris prophesy the biggestfall of snow this winter that New Zealand has had for 30 years." " But you'll be back before the autumn muster? " Marion said again. "One never knows," said Oliver Stormont,. gloomily. " We're going to explore some new caves. Queer things happen in caves now and' then. Anyway, look out for the snow .- theMaons are none of your Zadkiels or Moore's Almanacs." "How do they know?" asked Ailsa, brightly, having returned in time to catch the last sentence. "Oris it a priestly secret you mustn't, tell, Mr Diogenes?" Oliver Stormont gave he"r a long, steady look. " They know by the berries in the bush, and 1 by the flowers of the Piki-Arero, the wild clematis you used to twine into Dryad wreathsin November." " I see your game ; you are a wise man tomake for sunny Nelson in time," said Harry,, with laboured jocularity. "If you are not back before spring, bring two or three headstones in. your valise for our frozen remains." With a» quickly paling face, Ailsa glanced) from one to the other, but she said not a word. Marion said: — " After such dog days as these last week, on& feels grateful to the Maoris for a thought of coolness. Baby, you have stolen my thimble ; go and get it, felonious infant." Ailsa rose in a dazed way, and went out. But Marion stayed no time for the thimbleThe two men, left alone, looked at each other> each filling his pipe with ostentatious and silent, care. "You'll manage all right, I suppose?" Oliversaid roughly at last. " Perfectly ; I see you've got to go," said Harry slowly, every word cutting the air with aweight of meaning. " I know, but, dash it all, you needn't sit there chucking me out as coolly as you would a broken' egg-shell. You may stay, you know." " Yes," said the other deliberately, "I may stay, and you must go — and the Lord help us both ! " " Amen to that ! " said Oliver Stormont, with. a short groan. " And yet, I always told you that if you had done as I said at first, you might have saved something out of the wreck. 00 course I'm done for ; there's no possible way out, is there? " He asked it in a pitiable way, as a blind man might have done. " None. You could only bring the skytumbling about our ears, and that wouldn't comfort anybody, you know," answered Harry sadly. " Comfort? " said Oliver, catching at the word,. " yes, that is what I can't see clearly yet. I only want to do the square thing. I never meant todo anything else." "I believe you, old chap. And if you think I'm not sorry for you, you are mightily mistaken." Oliver looked at Harry in a curiously desolate, yet affectionate way. "0, we've rowed too long in the same boat, old man, to think of getting nasty now. But; you see, it's this way. I'm done for, of course. Still, if I take away something, doesn't it seem honest to leave just as much as I take? A word, say, or a letter? " How pitifully the big, blustering man sought for his cue ! iking me," said Harry gently, "I'm no good. I jss with my own affairs somehow, and lost every what your old dad would have said. I think f yet in the little old church at Woodthorpe, when we ; vacation."

which he had written his own name. So much he had discerned, w hen " It's no use asl '< she lifted the book and laid it against her rosy cheek. Then, in a played pitch and toi dazzling glory of pink, as it seemed, the white page was pressed to time. But think v her lips, and dropped again in a sudden laughing timidity hear him preaching y j Mr Stormont suddenly stiffened every muscle to resist the pulling were out in the long

" Yes, he was always straight, up hill and down dale," Oliver aused. "But yet, is it honest to take something and leave nothing?" c continued, obstinately. "Well, think whether your straight old dad would have advised caving poison done up in a sugar coating." Oliver Stormont bowed his head on his hands. "Heaven help me! I only want to do the square thing." he aid. CHAPTER VIII. A RIFT. (From the Diary of Ailsa Drummond.) March. — The poplars are turning early this year, Marion says. [fc was a foolish fancy, of course, but, knowing the native trees were jnfading, I thought all New Zealand trees were unfading That was m summer ; now it is nipping autumn, amd 1 know that British leaves go on dying, and British hearts go on aching just the same mder the Southern Cross as they do under Charles's Wain Aching? Yes, the shadow of Granton is very hard to bear now that [ am left the only buffer, such a feeble little buffer, too, between those two iron-hard natures, who are yet so tender and humam to me. I try to balance warmly and evenly between them, to throw a, veil of cheerful talking over the mystery of their long silence [t is such an effort now ; it was m bard in summer. I was so happy &"" so selfish. But effort or none, see now it is my life's mission, am we shall spend our three lives this way. For, of course. I shall never leave Marion ; whom have lin all the world j but Marion? Ak Once I had J^L

a little hope of reconciling them ; that is gone now. Sometimes I fancy we -three are lying at a stagnant Pool of Bethesd -waiting for the angel to trouble the water. What shape that angel may wear I fear at times to thinl my nerve, my courage seems broken. It was so different when Mr Stormont was here. 1 never knew what a sheltering rock a man could be till I came here. Just like a Titanic rock he was ; so strong, so clearly lined against the sky. It is •four weeks to-day since he left u&, and only one short line to Harry all that time. Why should he trouble to write? He is too busy among those wonderful things ; too busy watching the face of the great Nature Spirit •that is his only love. I knew that he went away every year; but he went so suddenly; and he is to be away so much longer than usual this time. Ah me ' how lightly these men fold up their tents like the Arabs. Once I told him that, and he said if it were not so the human race would still be sitting outside the barred gate .of Eden, quarrelling in one large potato field ! But at least none of those arrowy little things that Marion says so often is true of him. He was not bound ito stay ; no, not by one meaning look, or one light ■word. If I could only remember one such! Yet, no, it would be a sorry comfort that would lessen his memory. For I scorn the light mam, the niddering lover, as Marion herself does. It was all a mistake, that I took in somehow at the mind's pores— by nothing , e lse that he liked better to be at Granton last summer ■than ever before, and would not leave it without good •cause. I smile a little sometimes, thinking over the story I am going to write ; a story about a foolish little girl -who was spoilt by foolish big boys long ago, and fancied a great grown king of men might bow down and worship her too (she being the only woman in his daily view). And how she found that a small mortal magnet was nothing at all when a great Nature Spirit looked at him out of the clouds and beckoned to follow ; how she found that an Alpine butterfly or a new lizard would draw far more strongly than she. She is to tell it when she is an old woman, like ■my pretty old Auntie Jean, whose lover died in India ages ago. And she never married. I shall call it by the name of that little old ■song that Auntie Jean used to sing. How did it go? : — THE LANG AWA' DAYS. There was daffing in the byre, An' lilting on the braes ; There was dancing in the ha', In the lang awa' days. There were ribbons for a queen, That fluttered in the blaze ; There were jewels in the lift, In the lang awa' days. There was siller in the burn, An' magic in the Mays; There were pots o' weather gowd, In the lang awa' days. An' ilka lad was leal, To the maiden o' his praise ; There was hinny in the kame, In the lang awa' days. It will be such a sad, absurd bit of a story. I shall write it in the -winter, in that great snow he spoke of. lam only dreaming it now rnnder the dying poplars. While Ailsa dreamed her story among the fallen leaves, Horatio

Butterleigh and Maggie Murray rode again to Granton. Still did the ; wool king tarry afar, carving out a, realm on the West Coast road ' for his bride to be, and little dreaming that that bride was faltering j m alleginnce. A delicious paltering with unfaith had crept into Maggie's I life, wontedly so honest and serene. She had lapsed much into reading the Family Herald, a- journal much favoured by romantic shepherds | in the back country. In this instance it belonged rightfully to her hand maiden, Biddy MacMurrough, by deed of gift from her lover, (ieorge Cassidy. Maggie now lingered at the gate of the Scented j .Soap Paradise, a self-seeking and not unhopeful Peri. After one ' specially delightful evening on the little rose-scented verandah, when ' Horatio's elusive love-making had almost approached declaration, she had taken the wool king's reproaching portrait off her dressing table, and hidden it away with a spasm of mingled shame and triumph. She then mentally merged her identity in that of a certain Corinne of the Family Herald, who, in the last number, had rearched a similar crisis. She awaited developments in life and the serial with a fluttering enjoyment which was avowedly the daintiest cream of misery. She was somewhat chagrined that her plump form showed no appreciable sign of wasting, and that her appetite remained on the whole normal ; ' her prototype Corinne had fitly wasted to a shadowy sylph some time before. Yet this delightful sorrow was shortly dashed with commonplace misgivings. Her jealousy of Ailsa was always a shadow in the background ; and alas ' try as she would to stretch truth to meet , Hnrntio. sime Hor.itio. felt, could not always be stretched to I meet truth, there was a ring she did not like in I his denials of interest in the Granton young lady. Even more killing to the sweet Corinne romance were the quiet gibes of Vier father at his cadet. "Ay, he's a bright lad, yon. I've tried him wi' the coos, I've tried him wi' the horses, I've tried him wi' the sheep, I've . tried him wi' the &. V.r>r.lro an' it's

clean beyond me what I'll pit him tae next. I think I'll pin a wheen ' screeds o' paper to his coat tails and sec him to stand amang the i taties in the wind ; maybe he'd haud the hens in fear ; nae ither beast ] can be got to mind h ; .m." ' The cup of Corinne had held no such bitterness as this, Maggie ' 1 felt with an angry blush. She could not deny, however, that there , I was a want in the heroes of the Scented Soap Paradise when it came | to the sordid contingencies of ireful cows and fiery horses ; and once j or twice she felt an admiring paing when thinking of the easy friendly | i grace w:th which her wool king was wont to break in the wildest j of colts. Still they were hard in their judgments, these men of the ' soil. Did one kindle the kitchen fire with dried rose-leaves? The departure of Mr Stormont was, of course, a great satisfaction ! t > Horatio, and a secret disquiet to Maggie. She was aware that his pleasure in her company on this errand to Granton was more passive I than active. Horatio, indeed, was beginning a refrigerating process > ( with Maggie, having lazily determined to put his fortune to the test at once with Ailsa, in the convenient absence of the "yahoo in moleskins," as he acidly termed his rival. Not that Horatio's plans ! about settling in life were more definite yet than those of a butterfly ; but j it would have been a personal reproach to any exiled Crichton not [ to be engaiged to the only young lady in a radius of thirty miles, and ! she a beauty in her own right at that. So Horatio took himself gently and admiringly to task for his deviations with Maggie, and posed ' to himself as the Algernon of the last yellow-back novel he had read — , Algernon beng ludicrously the male counterpart of Corinne ; only it i was a well-rehearsed part in Mr Butterleigh's case. Fortune favoured the brave. While Maggie changed her habit, Ailsa, ordered in haste to pick apples for a pudding, was found by

Horatio in the garden, and so divine an opportunity was nnt to be et by. But fortune favoured no further. Ailsa's answer was quiet, inal, and not even decently regretful, the chagrinned lover thought \s she took her basket hurriedly to the house, she encountered Marion, ;vhose keen eyes detected the annoyance on her face. " Have I lost Prince Charming for a brother-in-law," whispered the ady of Granton, wickedly. "0, Marion, you witch! It was such a 'Young Ladies' Journal' iffair ;so annoying. No, you couldn't fry a steak at the burning of hia larp," she concluded, with a sad little smile at the unexplained reference. Lhen she whispered again : — "I'm 'in a swither' about our Maggie. I wish she knew. Is this sranishing wool king worth helping, do you think?" Mrs Netherby pursed her lips. "Ye-es. He is a lump, but at least he goes in the lump without ■eservation," she said. "I might have temporised, or something, just to show her — but 0. [ couldn't," said Ailsa, shivering. Her concern was happily needless. The window of Maggie's tiring chamber looked out on the apple trees. Though words were inaudible, bhe pantomine of Horatio's repulse was clear as day to eyes sharpened by jealousy. Maggie's toilette took twice the usual time, but she emerged at last, clothed and in her right mind ; looking all the prettier for a touch of ireful carmine on either cheek. In that hour the ill-fitting mantle of Corinne dropped off Maggie Murray's sensible soul ior ever. When Horatio approached her with a limp remembrance of iuty and proposal to return that night, she merely said : — " 'Deed you may start now if you think the dipping is waiting till you get back. But I'm not going." Further faint expostulation brought out this. "What's to hurt me? I knew the Corrie road before you came, md I'll know it after you're gone." But the cup of Mr Butterleigh's sorrow was not yet full. He 2ould not decently escape Harry's well-meaning hospitality after lunch, md wearily traversed a couple of fifty-acre paddocks to admire some new horses lately purchased by the Granton firm. Marion and Ailsa took Maggie to enjoy the autumn sunshine in the garden. But Ailsa. spiritless and averse to company, soon made ai faint excuse to go and look for her tatting, and slipped away into a sunny nest of broom on the ather side of the house. "The long and weary day, the long and weary day!" she sighed, remembering the refrain of a favourite German song. The sharp sound of galloping hoofs came up the track ; too common i station sound to excite attention. But she heard a surprised word from Long Jimmy, hurrying to the stable, and in the same second rang a " Coo-ec " that sent the blood deafeningly to her heart. She flew to a little gate opening on the stable yard and peeped out. Sure and safe, indeed, it was Oliver Stormont, and he had seen her, and she could not go and look for her lost voice, as she wanted to do. But hliis Oliver Stormont, looked fifteen years vouneer than the man who

vent away. His eyes sparkled, his step had the alert spring of i boy's. And, shade of Mrs Grundy ! without taking any heed of the possible reconnoitring of Long Jimmy, the returned wanderer simply ifted the small person bodily off her feet and kissed her squarely Dn the mouth : — "My little girl, waiting at the gate ! " The sunny nest in the broom was big enough to hold two ; and "or ten delirious minutes each asked incoherent questions, which were followed by utterly irrelevant replies. Then calmness began to come back. Oliver turned up the petite face to meet his eyes. "My wife that is to be ! " he said. " But — Mr Stormont — you haven't asked me to marry you yet," expostulated Ailsa, in an April rainbow of smiles and tears. "By Jove ! no more I have. I'll do it now in proper form if you wish. Only it's like saying grace after the soup, don't you think? " And Ailsa forgot to be angry at this serene assumption of her consent, forgot to say anything at all, indeed. And he stroked her hair, saying, solemnly : — "My true and noble wife that is to be, for whose sake I shall think all women good henceforth ! " "Ah, why did you not before?" The question leaped out unawares. He picked his words carefully in answering ; but it was not then that Ailsa thought there was a reservation behind them. "It was a woman that sent me out to Australia first. She married a bran new copper title, with an elderly brewer attached to it. She made it an excellent wife, I understand. And I'm eternally grateful bo her."

T lie shadows were lengthening when the bethrothed pan btiolled out, aim in arm. meeting the startled eyes of Harry and Horatio, as they turned a corner. An old line of care furrowed again on Mi Stormonfs foiehead. He stooped, with a gravp but openly propnetai\ air, to whisper: — " Good-bye, dear, for a little while i I have to speak to the stern guardian now." Ailsa tied like a lapwing. The cup of Horatio was now full indeed. As he retired unnoted to mount his sober charger, he cast a Byronic scowl backward at his rival. "Theie'-s no encouragement for a fella to stay civilised in this beastly countiy," he mused, savagely. "Put a feather in \ our hair, and stalk round in a blanket and bluchers, and people will think something of you ! " Long and earnestly did the masters of Granton confer, pacing up and down under the poplars. Ailsa, peering in a flutter from the sitting-room window, thought : — "Dear, dear me, if it takes all that time getting Harry's consent, how long shall I be getting Marion's? " For some unexplained reason she had a curious shrinking from telling Marion. When at last her sister entered her room, she was nervously brushing her hair before the glass. "Mr Stormont is back, Marion," she said, under the dark silky veil. A flash of satisfaction seemed to light Mrs Netherby's face for an instant. " So soon," she said. "It isn't soon — five weeks yesterday," said Ailsa, aggrievedly. "Well?" said Mrs Netherby, in a dry voice.

w ith your heads in a bu&h ! And, now , I think I shall go and electrify Maggie with the news.'' "Ah, but I wish she were really quite pleaded,'" murmured the clearsighted girl. But again the shadow of (iianton rolled off her joyful spirit, like mist from the mountain side.