Hatter's Castle

"Oh! Matt dear, it'll be hard to do without ye! You're goin' to leave me just when I'm beginnin' to "

A strange exultation possessed him as she pressed against him and, seizing her downcast face between his palms, he made her look at him.

"Don't say you're beginning say you do love me."

She did not speak but more potent than any words veiled her soft eyes as though she feared to let him see the intensity of her passion for him.

"Ye do!" he cried. "I can see that ye do!" His lips twitched, his nostrils dilated as a fierce delight filled him, not from the touch of her form alone, but from the understanding that he had ousted his father, that fate had delivered into his hands a powerful weapon of revenge.

"I know I'm a bad girl, Matt," she whispered, "but I mean to do well. I'm goin' to leave him. I went to the front room by myself all last night. That that's finished. I would never look at another man unless I married him and then I would stick to my man through thick and thin."

He continued to look at her fixedly, whilst she continued, with great feeling:

"I'think I could make a man happy if I tried. There's wee things about me that he might like, one way and another. I would do my best to give him a' that he wanted!" She sighed and drooped her head against his shoulder.

His thoughts twisted incoherently amongst the conflict of his emotions, but through the warm mists in his brain he saw that this was doubly desirous to him not only to strike his father but additionally for his own gratification. Nancy was a woman in a thousand, lovely, entrancing, ardent, not with the strong and clumsy vehemence of Agnes Moir, but with a subtler, a more delicate and alluring flame which pervaded her pale white body like an essence and drew him towards its clear heat. Her beauty, too, surpassed by far the merely tolerable comeliness of the unfortunate Agnes; her figure was not sturdy, but elegant; no umber shadow menaced the exquisite curve of her soft upper lip; not only was she beautiful, but she was, he was convinced, enamoured of him to the point of passionately abandoning his father because of her feeling for him. Filled by these thoughts, he was confirmed in his resolution and, in a choked voice, he exclaimed:

"Nancy! There's something Fve got to tell you something else that you don't know. Something that might interest you. Would you like to hear it?"

She looked at him languishingly, throwing her head back so that the inclination of her poise invited his embrace, and was about to murmur "Yes", when suddenly the front door of the house clicked open and was heavily shut and the sound of footsteps was heard along the hall. Like a flash Nancy recovered herself from the apparent profundity of her feeling and, pushing Matt to the fireplace she cried, in a sharp whisper:

"Bide there and don't let on. He'll never know," Then in the same instant her hands had flown to her hair and, moving as lightly as quick fluttering birds, had adjusted, patted smooth such small disorder as might have existed. She was back at the table immediately, clattering the dishes, when Brodie entered the room.

For a moment Brodie paused in the doorway, an unwrapped bottle swinging in his hand, surveying first his son, whom he so rarely saw, with a black lowering disgust, allowing his glance to travel questioningly to Nancy, then returning restlessly to the uneasy figure by the fireplace. His dull understanding appreciated nothing of the undercurrent of the events he had disturbed, but his moody eye perceived the faint flush upon Man's sallow cheek, the downcast look, the nervous agitation of his attitude, and instinctively his memory rushed back to that scene in the house in the Vennel, when he had surprised his son with Nancy struggling in his arms. He knew nothing, suspected nothing, but he was none the less tormented by this vision of his memory, felt instinctively that some secret activity had been in process at his entry; his glance became black and darting, impaling Matt, who moved more uneasily and hung his head with greater embarrassment the longer that silent stare continued.

Nancy, at the table, her inveterate hardihood rendering her composed, perfect mistress of her features, inwardly furious at the flustered ineptitude of the hero to whom she had so passionately avowed her devotion, attempted to rescue him by remarking tartly to the elder man:

"What are ye standin' there for, Brodie like a big bear? Come in and sit down and don't swing that bottle as though ye wanted to brain us. Ye look downright uncanny. Come awa' in." But Brodie did not seem to hear her and, allowing her remark to pass unheeded, still continued to view his son from the vantage point of the door, still swinging the bottle like a clubj until at length he spoke, saying with a snarl:

"What's the honour o' this visit due to? We're not usually so fortunate when we come in at this time no! Your home's not good enough for you in the evenings now. You're one o' these late birds we never seem to see at all."

Matt opened his dry lips to speak, but before he could reply Brodie continued fiercely:

"Have ye been sayin' anything to Nancy here that ye might like to repeat to me? If ye have, I'm listenin' and waitin'."

Here Nancy broke in, flinging her hands upon her hips, squaring her neat shoulders, and tossing her head indignantly.

"Are ye mad, Brodie, that ye go on like that? What are ye talkin' jbout at all, at all? If you're goin' to rave in that fashion, I'll be tnuckle obliged if ye'll kindly keep my name out o' it."

He turned slowly and surveyed her. His drawn brows relaxed.

"I know, woman! I know it's all right! I would never doubt ye and I know he's too feared of me to dare it, but somehow the sight o' the glaikit, fushionless loon aye embitters me. He looks as if butter wouldna melt in his mouth and yet I can never forget that he tried to shoot me." He swung around again to Matt, who had paled at these last words, and exclaimed bitterly, "I should have given ye over to the police for that you that tried to shoot your father. Ye got off too

easy that night. But I'm no' so good humoured as I used to be, so don't try any more tricks on me or by God! I'll lay your skull open wi' this very bottle. Now will ye tell me what you're doin' here."

"He was tellin' me about some job or other," cried Nancy shrilly, "but I didna ken what it was a' about." Would he never speak? she thought, the stupid fool that was standing there as white and flabby as a soft lump of putty, giving the whole affair away by his lack of gumption.

"What job?" said Brodie. "Speak for yourself, sir!"

At last Matthew found his tongue, he who on the homeward journey had visualised his superior attitude during the interview and traced the manner in which he would gradually lead up to it, who had just told Nancy how he would throw his new position in this old devil's teeth.

"I've got a position in America, Father," he stammered. Brodie's face did not change but after a pause he sneered:

"So you're goin' to do some work at last. Weel! Weel! Wonders will never cease. The heir to the house o' Brodie is goin' to work! It's a good thing too, for though ye've kept out of my way right well, now that I've seen ye again I feel I would soon have flung ye out." He paused. "What is this grand position ? Tell us all about the marvels of it."

"It's just my own work," stammered Matt, "store-keeping. I've had my name down for months with two or three firms, but it's not often a chance like this crops up."

"And how did a thing like you get hold o' the chance? Was it a blind man that engaged ye?"

"It was an emergency," replied Matt apologetically. "The man that had the job died suddenly. He was flung off his horse and they wanted somebody in a hurry. I'll have to leave at once within a week to fill the place as soon as ever I can. Maybe ye've heard o' the firm. They're…" Here a cup fell clattering from the tray and smashed with a sudden, ringing cadence upon the floor.

"Guidsakes," cried Nancy in a great commotion, "that's what comes o' standin' haverin' like auld wives. It's always the way if ye take your mind off what you're doin' you're sure to go and break something or other." She bent down to pick up the fragments and as she stooped she flashed a glance at Matthew, quick, covert, but full of suppressed and significant warning. "I'm sorry if I interrupted you," she murmured to Brodie as she got up.

Matthew had observed the glance, interpreted its meaning and though his embarrassment grew, swollen from another source, with a feeble attempt at strategy he lowered his eyes and murmured:

"They're they're in the wool business. It's to do with sheep."

"By God! They've got the right man," cried his father, "for a bigger sheep than yourself never went bleatin' about this earth. Take care they don't crop ye, by mistake, at the shearin' time. Look up, ye saft sheep! Can ye not hold your head up like a man and look at me? A' this flash and dash that's come on ye since ye went to India doesna deceive me. I thought it might make a man o' ye to go out there, but I see through the rotten gloss that it's gie'n ye and you're but the same great, blubberin' sapsy that used to greet and run to your mother whenever I put my een on ye."

He stood looking at his son, filled by a profound and final repugnance which sickened him even of the thought of baiting Matt, who, he considered disgustedly, was not worth even the lash of his tongue. Thank God he was going away to quit his home, to abandon this sneaking, sponging existence, to be irrevocably out of his sight, out of the country, forgotten.

Suddenly he felt tired, realised dimly that he was not the man he had been and, with a quick rushing desire for the nepenthe of forgetfulness, he wanted to be alone with Nancy, wanted to drink. To his son he said slowly:

"You and me are finished, Matt. When ye've gone, yell never come back into this house. I never want to see ye again," then, turning to Nancy and regarding her with a fond and altered glance, he added:

"Bring me a glass, Nancy. He doesna deserve it, but I'm goin' to give him a toast," As she silently departed to obey, he followed her with the same glance, feeling that she was warming to him again, that with his son out of the house, they would be more private, more unrestrainedly together than before. "Thank ye, Nancy," he said mildly, as she returned and handed him the glass. "Ye're an obleegin' lass. I don't know how I ever got on without ye." Then he continued reassuringly, "I'm not goin' to take ower much to-night. No! No! This bottle will do me for a week. I know fine ye don't like me to take too much and I'm not goin' to do it. But we must pledge this big maunderin' sheep before he goes out to join the flock. Will ye have just a wee taste yer'self, Nancy? It'll do ye no harm. Come along now," he added, with a clumsy ingratiating manner, waving his arm at her, "away and get yourself a glass and I'll give ye just enough to warm ye."

She shook her head, still without speaking, her eyes half-veiled, her lips smoothly parted, her expression neither hostile nor friendly but shaded by a vague reticence which gave to her an air of enigmatic subtlety that encouraged him, drew him towards her by its very mystery. Actually, behind the mask of her face, lay a bitter contempt of him, activated the more fiercely as she saw that in choosing thus to humiliate Matt before her he was intimidating his son, making it more difficult for her to achieve the purpose she had set herself.

"No?” he said affably. "Well! I winna drive ye, woman. You're a mare that needs gentle guidin' as I've proved to my cost. Ye maun be humoured not driven." A short laugh broke from him as he uncorked the bottle, and holding the glass to the level of his eye, which glittered at the first sight of the trickling liquor, he slowly poured out a large measure, raised the bottle, paused, moistened his lips with his tongue, then quickly added a further quantity of the spirit. "I may as well take a decent glass to begin with. It saves goin' back and back. And I can stand it, onyway," he muttered, keeping his head down and away from her, as he placed the bottle upon the dresser and transferred the glass of whisky to his right hand. Then, stretching out his arm, he cried:

"Here's a toast to the heir to the house o' Brodie the last I'll ever drink to him. May he go to his grand job and may he stay there! Let him get out o' my sight and keep out o' it. Let him go how he likes and where he likes, but let him never come back, and if ever he tries to get on to that horse he was speakin' about, may he fall off and break his useless neck like the man that had the place before him!"

He threw back his head and, with a tilt of his wrist, drained the glass at a gulp; then, surveying Matthew with a sardonic grin, he added, "That's my last good-bye to ye. I don't know where ye're goin' I don't even want to know. Whatever happens to ye makes no odds now, for it'll never reach my ears!" And with these words he ceased to regard his son, ignored him utterly. Now that he had swallowed the whisky he felt more vigorous. Lifting his eye again to the bottle on the dresser, he considered it speculatively for a moment, cleared his throat, straightened himself up and, his head averted from Nancy, remarked solemnly, "But I canna drink a toast to a thing like him and pass over a braw lass like my Nancy." He shook his head at the injustice of the thought as, with the empty tumbler still in his hand, he approached the table.

"No! that would not be fair!" he continued, pouring himself out another portion. "I couldna do that in all conscience we must give the girl her due. There's nothing I wouldna do for her, she means so much to me. Here, Nancy!" he cried, wheedlingly, turning to her, "This is a wee salute to the bonniest lass in Levenford."

She had controlled her temper so long that now it seemed impossible for her to contain herself further and her veiled eyes sparkled and a faint colour ran into her cheeks as though she might immediately stamp her foot and assail him furiously with her tongue. But instead, she stifled the words she wished to utter behind her tight lips and, turning on her heel, marched into the scullery where she began noisily to wash the dishes. With a chastened expression Brodie stood, his head slightly on one side, listening to the clatter of china; he heard in it some suggestion of her exasperation, but soon, returning his eyes again to the glass in his hand, he slowly raised it to his lips and slowly drained it; then, advancing to his chair, he lowered himself heavily into it.

Matt, who had remained at the place by the fireplace where he had been thrust by Nancy, a silent and dismayed spectator of his father's recent actions, now moved uneasily upon his feet, subdued more abjectly by the closer proximity of the other as he sat brooding in his chair. He looked restlessly around the room, bit his pale lips, rubbed his soft, damp hands together, wishing fervently to leave the room but, thinking his father's eye to be upon him, was afraid to stir. At length, emboldened by the continued silence in the room, he widened the scope of the sweeping circles of his eye and allowed his flickering glance to touch for a swift second upon the face of the other beside him. Immediately he saw that Brodie was not, as he had feared, contemplating him but instead gazing earnestly towards the open doorway of the scullery and, reassured by the other's abstraction, he ventured one tentative foot in front of him, was not observed, and, continuing his stealthy progress slid quietly out of the kitchen.

His intention had been to escape from the house as quickly as possible, resigning himself to an interminable wait in the streets outside until his father had gone to bed, but he was arrested, in the dimness of the hall, by a segment of light striking out from the parlour. As he paused, suddenly it occurred to him that since Nessie was within, he might spend a few moments more comfortably with her before departing into the frosty night outside. He felt too, unconsciously, the pressing need for the opportunity to declaim upon the merit of the attainment of his new post and the desire for some approving tribute to restore the damage inflicted upon his self-esteem. Consequently he opened the door and looked into the room.

Nessie, seated at the table, surrounded by the inevitable accompaniment of her books, did not look up at his entry but remained with folded arms, hunched shoulders and bent head. But when he spoke, with a sudden quick start she flinched as though the unexpected waves of speech had struck her across the stillness of the room.

"I'm coming in a minute," was all that he had said.

"Oh, Matt!" she cried, pressing her small closed hand into her left side. "What a start you gave me! I didn't hear you come in. I seem to jump at anything these days."

As he observed her present attitude, the inclination of her head, the mild and limpid eyes, filled with a mute apology for her weakness, a striking memory presented itself to him, making him for the moment forget his own concerns.

"My goodness, Nessie," he exclaimed, staring at her. "You're getting as like Mamma as life. I can almost see her looking out of your face the now!"

"Do you think so, Matt," she replied, flattered in some degree to be the object of his interest. "What makes you say that?"

He seemed to consider,

"I think it's your eyes; there's the same look about them as though you thought something was going to happen to you and were looking ahead for it."

At his words she was hurt and immediately lowered these betraying eyes, keeping them fixed upon the table as he continued: "What's come over you lately ? You don't seem the same to me at all. Is there anything wrong with you that's making you like that?"

"Everything's wrong," she answered slowly. "Since Mamma died I've been as miserable as could be and I haven't had a soul to speak to about it. I can't suffer to be near to to Nancy. She doesn't like me. She's always at me for something. Everything is different. The house has been so different that it's not like the same place Father's different too."

"You've nothing to be feared of from him. You were always his pet," he retorted. "He's always sucking around you in some way."

"I wish he would leave me alone," she replied dully. "He's just driving me on all the time with this work. I can't stand it. I don't feel well in myself."

"Tuts! Nessie," he exclaimed reprovingly. "That's Mamma all over again. Ye should pull yourself together. What's the matter with you?"

"I've always got a headache! I wake up with it in the morning and it never leaves me all day. It makes me so stupid that I don't know what I'm doing. Besides, I can't eat the food we get now and I'm always tired. I'm tired at this very minute."

"You'll be all right when you've got this exam over. You'll win the Latta all right."

"I'll win it all right," she exclaimed wildly. "But what's going to become of me then? What is he going to do with me after? Tell me that! Am I to be shoved on like this all the time and never know what's going to come of it? He'll never say when I ask him. He doesn't know himself."

"You'll be a teacher that's the thing for you."

She shook her head.

"No! That wouldn't be good enough for him. I wanted to do that myself to put down my name to go on to the Normal, but he wouldn't allow it. Oh, Matt!" she cried, "I wish I had somebody to put in a word for me. I'm so downright wretched about it and about everything else I wish sometimes I had never been born!"

He shifted his gaze uncomfortably from her appealing face which, stamped by a forlorn wistf ulness, seemed to implore him to help her.

"You should get out the house and play with the other girls," he advanced, somewhat uncertainly. "That would take your mind off things a bit."

"How can I?" she exclaimed frantically. "Ever since I was a wee thing I've been kept in at these lessons, and now I'm flung in here every night, and will be, too, for the whole of the next six months. And if I dared to go out, he would leather me. You wouldn't believe it, Matt, but I sometimes think I'll go out of my mind the way I'm kept grindin' at it."

"I go out," he exclaimed valiantly. "He didn't stop me goin' out."

"You're different," she replied sadly, her puny outburst subsiding and leaving her more dejected than before. "And even if I did go out, what good would it do? None of the other girls would play with me. They'll hardly speak to me as it is. One of them said the other day that her father said she was to have nothing to do with any one that came out of this house. Oh! I do wish you could help me, Matt!"

"How can I help you?" he replied roughly, irritated at her entreaties. "Don't you know I'm goin' away next week?"

She gazed at him with a slight wrinkling of her brow and repeated, without apparently comprehending:

"Going away next week?"

"To South America," he replied grandly; "to a splendid new position I've got out there. Miles and miles away from this sink of a town."

Then she understood, and in the sudden perception that he was leaving immediately for a far distant land, that she, of all the Brodie children, would be left in a solitary, unprotected state to face the dreadful unhappiness of her present existence in the home, she paled. Matt had never helped her much, and during these latter months had, indeed, comforted her still less, but he was her brother, a companion in her distress, and she had only a moment ago appealed to him for assistance. Her lips quivered, her eyes became blurred, she burst into tears.

"Don't go, Matt," she sobbed. "I'll be left all alone if ye go. I’ll have nobody at all in this terrible house."

"What are ye talking about," he retorted savagely. "You can't know what you're saying. Am I going to give up the chance of a lifetime money and freedom and and everything for the likes of you? You're mad!"

"I'll be mad if you go," she cried. "What chance will I have here all by myself? Mary away, and you away, and only me left! What'll become of me?"

"Stop your howling," he shot at her, with a quick glance towards the door. "Do you want everybody to hear you with that bawling? He'll be in at us in a minute if you're not careful. I've got to go and that's all about it."

"Could ye not take me with you then, Matt," she gulped, stifling her sobs with difficulty. "I know I'm young but I could keep the house for ye. That's always the sort of thing I've wanted to do and not these miserable lessons. I would do everything for you, Matt."

Her attitude apprised him that she would serve him like a slave, her eyes implored him not to leave her desolate and forsaken.

"They would never hear of ye going out. The sooner you get it out of your head the better. Can you not look pleased at your brother getting a fine job like this instead of moaning and groaning about it?"

"I am pleased for your sake, Matt," she sniffed, wiping her eyes with her saturated handkerchief. "I… I was just thinking about myself."

"That's it," he shot out. "You can't think of anybody else. Try to have some consideration for other people. Don't be so selfish!"

"All right, Matt," she said, with a last convulsive sigh. "I'll try. Anyway, I'm sorry."

"That's better," he replied largely, in a more affable tone; but even as he spoke he shivered, and, changing his tone to one of complaint, he cried, "Gosh; It's cold in here! How do you expect a man to stand talking to you if you haven't got a fire? If your circulation can stand this, mine can't. I'll need to put my coat on and away out to walk up my circulation." He stamped his feet then turned abruptly, calling to her, "I'm away out then, Nessie."

When he had gone she remained rigid, the small, wet ball of the handkerchief clutched tightly in her hand, her red-lidded eyes fixed upon the door which had closed upon her like the door of a prison. The avenue of the future down which she gazed was gloomy and amidst the dark, forbidding shadows she saw the figure of Nessie Brodie pass fearfully and alone. No one could now come between her and her father, no one interpose between her frailty and the strength of his unknown purpose. Matthew would go as Mary had gone. Mary! She had thought so much of her lately that she longed now for the comfort of her sister's arm around her, for the solace of her quiet smile, the sustaining courage that lay within her steady

eyes. She needed someone to whom she might unburden her weary mind, in whom she could confide her sorrows, and the thought of her sister's tranquil fortitude drew her. "Mary!" she whispered, like an entreaty. "Mary dear! I didn't love you as you deserved when you were here, but oh! I wish I had you near me now!"

As the almost incredible words left her lips, the expression on her pinched, tear-stained face grew suddenly transfigured, illuminated as from a sudden light within. Hope again shone in the sorrowful eyes, mingled with a purpose so rash that only her present despair could have induced her to consider it. Why, she thought, should she not write to her sister ? A terrible consideration, but her only chance of succour! Upstairs, hidden in a secret corner of her bedroom, lay the letter which Mamma had given her some days before she died and which bore the address in London where Mary lived.

If she acted carefully, her father would never know; she knew, too, that Mary would never betray her, and with the renewed consciousness of her sister's love, she got up from her chair, and, as though walking in a dream, went out of the room and tiptoed silently upstairs. After a moment she returned and shutting the door, listened attentively, trembling violently in all her limbs. She had the letter, but she was terrified at what she had done, at what she proposed to do. Nevertheless she persisted in her purpose. At the table she tore out a leaf from one of her copy-books and hurriedly composed a short note of pathetic entreaty, telling Mary in a few words how she was situated and imploring her assistance, entreating her to come to her if she could. As she wrote, she looked up from time to time with agitated glances, as though expecting her father to enter, but soor the few scribbled lines, blotted by haste and the fall of an irrepressible

tear, were completed. She folded the ragged-edged sheet and thrust it in the envelope she had brought from upstairs. Then she addressed the envelope, copying each word carefully, and thrust it into the bosom of her dress; finally, with a pale face and palpitating heart, she resumed her bent position over her books and made pretence to study. But her precaution was unnecessary. No one entered the room during the whole evening. She was undiscovered and, early next morning, on her way to school, she posted the letter.

IV

JAMES BRODIE was awakening. No sun streamed through his window to stimulate gently his recumbent figure or set the golden motes swimming through straight rivers of light across his sleep-filled gaze.

Instead, a cold fine rain smirred the dripping panes, dulling the interior of the room to one drab monotone and meeting his half-opened eye like a melancholy reminder of his altered condition. He marked the unhappy aspect of the weather moodily, then from the window, his visible eye, now more fully opened to reveal the sticky, white coagulum at its corner, turned to the clock, and observing that the dim hands pointed to ten minutes past eight, ten minutes beyond his appointed but unkept hour of rising, grew more gloomy. To-day he would, he realised, be late at the office once again, would suffer another sharp rebuke from the upstart chief clerk who now attempted to control his working hours, who had threatened even to report him to the under manager should he fail to observe a more constant punctuality.

At this reflection his face, against the lighter background of the pillow, seemed to darken, the lines that marked it deepened like sharp incisions, and the eyes, losing their innate melancholy, were filled instead by a dull, morose obstinacy. Be damned to them all, he thought, they would not order him about; he would have another five minutes in bed in spite of the whole board of directors of the Latta Shipyard! He would, of course, make up the time by omitting to shave, which struck him now, as it frequently did, as a cunning way of defeating the powers which sought to move him to their rule and pattern of life. Such a ruse as this suited him too, in his own inclination, for he was now averse to shaving in the mornings, when his unsteady hand so often behaved erratically, trying his temper to control it, and on occasions making him gash his cheek. The early hours of the day never found him at his best for not only did his hand refuse to obey him, but his head ached, or his tongue felt like dry wood, or his stomach turned within him at the mere consideration of his breakfast. It was, he was well aware, the whisky which was responsible for these unwelcome visitations, and in this grey morning's light he felt, with a gloomy insight, that he must cut down his allowance. When he had made such resolutions in the past he had never, he told himself, been really serious, but now he must definitely make up his mind to take himself in hand, to drink nothing before dinner and thereafter to abstain until the evening, when he would be moderate, when indeed, he must be moderate if he were to please Nancy, whose favour was now of such vital necessity to him. Certainly she had been better disposed towards him during the last two days, and he reflected, with a more equable turn of mind, that although she had not come back to his room since their quarrel on the night of her visit to the aunt at Overton, the obvious reason which she had

advanced in excuse must surely be correct, in view of her recent kindness and more tolerant treatment of him. He could not do without Nancy! She had become as necessary to him and as indispensable as breath to his body, and for this reason alone he must be careful how he addressed himself to the bottle in future. Impossible that he should ever live without her! She would come to him again to-night, the fresher for his enforced abstinence, or he would know the reason why!

Some semblance of his old complacency seemed to flow into him at this last thought and, flinging off the bedclothes, he got out of bed; but as the cold air of the room struck his body he shivered, frowned, and losing his satisfied look, reached hurriedly for his clothes, which lay in a disordered heap upon a near-by qhair. He struggled into these garments with the utmost dispatch, giving his face alone some transient attention with water and soap before assuming his soiled linen collar, knotting his stringy tie and throwing on his baggy coat and waistcoat. The economy in time was considerable, for the whole process of dressing had not taken five minutes, and now he was ready, albeit after a fashion, to descend the stairs and consume his morning meal.

"Good mornin' to you, Brodie," cried Nancy agreeably, as he entered the kitchen. "You're on time all right to-day! How did ye sleep?"

"Not so weel as I would have liked," he replied heavily. "I was cold! Still, I've a feeling I'll be cosier to-night."

"You're not blate so early in the mornin'," she answered, with a toss of her head. "Sup up your porridge and be quiet."

He considered the porridge with pursed lips and some show of repugnance as he exclaimed:

"I don't feel like them somehow, Nancy. They're heavy on a man's stomach at breakfast time. They might do for supper but I can't think of them the now. Have ye anything else?"

"I've got a nice, sweet kipper in the pan just done to a turn," she cried complacently. "Don't eat the porridge if ye're not in the mood. I'll get ye the other this very minute."

He followed her active figure, observing the swirl of her skirts, the fluent movements of her neat feet and ankles as she rushed to carry out her words, and he was filled by a sudden appreciation of the marked improvement in her attitude towards him. She was coming near to him again, no longer looking at him with that sparkle of animosity in her eyes, but was even now running after him in a fashion strangely reminiscent of his wife's eagerness to serve him. He felt the comfort of being once more looked after with this devotion, especially as it came from his beloved but independent Nancy, and when she returned with the dish, he looked at her from the corner of his eyes and remarked:

"You're drawin' round to me again, I see. I can mind of mornings when some burnt porridge was good enough to fling at a poor man for his breakfast, but this juicy kipper is more to my taste, and your way o' lookin' at me is more to my likin' still. You're fond of me, Nancy, aren't ye?"

She gazed down at his tired face, lined, hollowed, disfigured by a two days' stubble of beard and split by a forced and unbefitting smile, envisaged his bowed and slovenly figure, his tremulous hands and uncared-for finger nails, and with a shrill little laugh, she cried:

"True enough, man! I've such a feelin' for ye now that I hardly like to own it. It fair makes my heart loup when I look at ye sometimes."

His smile was extinguished, his eyes puckered intently, and he answered:

"It's a treat for me to hear ye say that, Nancy! I know it's downright wrong o' me to tell ye, but I can't help it, I've got to depend on ye now something extraordinar'." Then, still disregarding his breakfast, he continued almost apologetically, as though he defended his conduct, "I never would have believed I could draw to anybody so much. I didna think I was that kind o' man, but ye see, I had to do without for so lang that when when we came thegither weel ye've fair taken hold of me. That's pkfin truth. Ye're not angry at me for tellin' ye a' this, are ye now?"

"No! No!" she exclaimed hurriedly. "Not a bit, Brodie. I should understand ye by this time. But come on now, don't waste the good kipper Pve taken the trouble to cook ye. I'm wantin' to hear how ye like it. And I’m anxious for ye to make a good breakfast, for you'll have to take your dinner out to-day."

"Take my dinner out! What for?" he exclaimed, in some surprise.

"Ye were away at Overton only last week ye're surely not goin' to see that aunt o' yours again?"

"No, I'm not!" she cried, with a pert toss of her head, "but she's comin' to see me! And I'm not wantin' you runnin' round after me, with her, that's a decent unsuspectin' body ay, and one that's fond o' me starin' the eyes out of her heid at your palavers. Ye can come home in the evenin'. Then I'll be ready for ye."

He glared at her for a moment with a dark countenance, then, suddenly relaxing, he shook his head slowly. "Damnation, woman! But ye have the cheek on ye. To think that you've got the length o' entertain! n' your friends in my house! Gad! It makes me see how far ye can go with me. I should have warmed the backside o' ye for doin' a thing like that without first askin' me but ye know I canna be angry with ye. It seems there's no end to the liberties you'll take with me."

"What's the harm?" she demanded primly. "Can an honest housekeeper body not see her relations if she wants to? It'll do ye good to have a snack outside; then I'll have a surprise all ready for ye when ye come."

He looked at her doubtfully.

"Surprise is the right word, after the way you've been treatin' me." He paused and added grimly, "I'm damned if I know what makes me so soft wi' ye."

"Don't talk like that, Brodie," she reprimanded mildly. "Your language is like a heathen Chinaman's sometimes."

"What do you know about Chinamen?" he retorted moodily, at last turning his attention towards the kipper and beginning to consume it in slow, large mouthfuls. After a moment he remarked, in an altered tone, "This has a relish in it, Nancy it's the sort of thing I can fancy in the mornin's now."

She continued to look at him in an oddly restrained fashion as he conveyed the food to his lowered mouth, then suddenly a thought seemed to strike her, and she cried:

"Guidsakes, what am I dreamin' about! There's a letter came for ye this mornin' that I forgot a' about."

"What!" he retorted, arresting his movements and glancing up in surprise from under his thick, greying eyebrows. "A letter for me!"

"Ay! I clean forgot in the hurry to get your breakfast. Here it is," and she took a letter from the corner of the dresser and handed it to him. He held the letter for a moment in his outstretched hand, drew it near to him with a puzzled look in his eyes, observed that it was stamped by the postmark of London, then, carelessly inserting his thick thumb, ripped the envelope open and drew out the sheet within. Watching him with some slight interest as he read the written words, Nancy observed the expressions of bewilderment, amazement, enlightenment, and triumph sweep across his face with the rapidity of clouds traversing a dark and windy sky. Finally his expression assumed a strange satisfaction as he turned the letter, again read it slowly through, and, lifting his eyes, fixed them upon the distance.

"Would ye believe it," he muttered, "and after all this time!"

"What?" she cried. "What is it about?"

"She has climbed down and wants to come crawlin' back!" He paused, absorbed in his own considerations, as though his words had been sufficient to enlighten her fully.

"I don't know what you mean," she exclaimed sharply. "Who are ye talkin' about?"

"My daughter Mary," he replied slowly; "the one that I kicked out of my house. I swore she would never get back until she had licked my boots, ay, and she said she never would come back, and here she is, in this very letter, cadging to win home and keep house for me. God! It's a rich recompense for me after a' these years!" He held up the letter between his tense fingers as though his eyes would

never cease to gloat upon it, sneering as he read : " 'Let the past be forgotten! I want you to forgive me.' If that doesna justify me my name's not Brodie. 'Since Mamma has gone I would like to come home. I am not unhappy here but sometimes lonely,' " he continued with a snarl. "-Lonely! By God, it's what she deserves. Lonely! Long may it continue. If she thinks she'll gel back here as easy as that, she's far mistaken. I'll not have her. No! Never!" He returned

his eyes to Nancy as though to demand her approval and, with twisted lips, resumed, "Don't ye see how this puts me in the right, woman! She was proud, proud as ye make them, but I can see she's broken now. Why else should she want home? God! What a comedown for her to have to whine to get taken back like this and and what a triumph for me to refuse her. She wants to be my housekeeper!" He laughed harshly. "That's a good one, is it no', Nancy? She doesna know that I've got you She's wantin' your job!"

She had picked the letter from his hand and was reading it.

"I don't see much of a whine here," she replied slowly. "It's a decent enough written letter."

"Bah!" he cried, "It's not the way it's written I'm thinkin' of! It's the meanin' of it all that concerns me. There's no other explanation possible, and the very thought of it lifts me like a dram o' rare spirits."

"You're not goin' to let her come back, then?" she queried tentatively.

"No!" he shouted. "I'm not! I've got you to look after me now. Does she think I want the likes o' her ? She can stop in this place in London that she's in, and rot there, for all I care."

"Ye mustna decide in a hurry," she admonished him; "after all, she's your own daughter. Think it over well before ye do anything rash."

He looked at her sulkily.

"Rash or not rash, I'll never forgive her," he growled, "and that's all there is to it." Then his eye suddenly lighted as he exclaimed, "I tell ye what might be a bawr though, Nancy and something that would cut her to the quick. Supposin' ye were to write back and tell her that the post she applied for was filled. That would make her feel pretty small, would it not? Will ye do't, woman?"

"No, I will not," she cried immediately; "the very idea. Ye maun do it yoursel' when you're about it."

"Well, at least ye'll help me to write my answer," he protested, "Suppose you and me do it thegether to-night when I come home. That smart head o' yours is sure to think on something clever for me to put in."

"Wait till to-night then," she replied, after some consideration, "and I'll think about it in the meantime."

"That's grand," he cried, playing in his mind with the idea of collaborating with her in the evening over this delightful task of composing a cutting reply to his daughter. "We'll lay our heads together. I know what you can do when you try."

As he spoke a faint horn sounded in the distance, swelling and falling at times, but always audible, entering the room with gentle though relentless persistency.

"Gracious," cried Nancy quickly, "there's the nine o'clock horn and you not out of the house yet. Ye'll be late as can be if ye don't hurry. Come on now, away with ye!"

"I'm not carin' for their blasted horns," he replied sullenly. "I'll be late if I like. You would think I was the slave of that damned whistle the way it draws me away from ye just when I'm not wantin' to go."

"I don't want ye to get the sack though, man! What would ye do if ye lost your job?"

"I would get a better one. I've just been thinkin' about that lately myself. What I've got is not near good enough for me."

"Wheesht! Now, Brodie," she conciliated him, "you're well enough as ye are. Ye might look further and fare worse. Come on and I'll see ye to the door!"

His expression softened as he looked at her and rose obediently, exclaiming:

"Don't you worry anyway, Nancy. I'll always have enough to keep you." At the front door he turned to her and said, in a voice which sounded almost pathetic, "It'll be a' day until I see you again."

She drew back a little and half shut the door as she replied irrelevantly:

"What a mornin', too. Ye should take an umbrella instead o' that auld stick. Are you minding about gettin' your dinner out to-day?"

"I'm mindin' about it," he answered submissively. "You know I heed what you tell me. Come on now give us a kiss before I go."

She was about to shut the door in his face when, at his attitude, something seemed to melt within her and, raising herself on her toes, inclining her head upwards, she touched with her lips the deep furrow that marked the centre of his forehead.

"There," she whispered under her breath, "that's for the man that ye were."

He stared at her uncomprehcndingly with eyes that gazed at hers appealingly, inquiringly, like the eyes of a devoted dog.

"What were ye say in'?" he muttered stupidly.

"Nothing," she cried lightly, withdrawing herself again. "I was just biddin' ye good-bye."

He hesitated, stammered uncomfortably:

"If it was If ye were thinkin' about about the drink, I want to tell ye that I'm going to cut it down to something reasonable. I know ye don't like me to take so much and I want to please ye, woman."

She shook her head slowly, looking at him curiously, intently.

"'Twasna that at all. If ye feel ye need a dram, I suppose ye maun have it. It's the only it's a comfort to ye, I suppose. Now away with ye, man."

"Nancy, dear, ye understand a man weel," he murmured in a moved voice. "There's nothing I couldna do for ye when you're like this."

He shifted his feet heavily, in some embarrassment at his own outburst, then in a gruflf voice full of his suppressed feeling exclaimed,

"I'll I'll away, then, woman. Good-bye just now."

"Good-bye," she replied evenly.

With a last look at her eyes he turned, faced the grey and melancholy morning, and moved off into the rain, a strange figure, coatless, crowned extravagantly by the large, square hat, from under which thick tuffs of uncut hair protruded fantastically, his arms behind his back, his heavy ash plant trailing grotesquely behind him in the mud.

He walked down the road, his brain confused by conflicting thoughts amongst which mingled a sense of abashment at the unexpected exhibition of his own emotion; but, as he progressed, there emerged from this confusion a single perception the worth to him of Nancy. She was human clay like himself, and she understood him, knew the needs of a man, appreciated, as she had just remarked, that he required sometimes the comfort of a glass. He did not feel the rain as it soaked into his clothing, so enwrapped was he in the contemplation of her, and into the dullness of his set face small gleams of light from time to time appeared. As he approached the shipyard, however, his reflections grew less agreeable, evidenced by the unrelieved harshness of his countenance, and he was concerned by his lateness, by the possibility of a reprimand, and affected by a depressing realisation, which time had not eradicated, of the very humiliating nature of his employment. He thought, too, in a different light of the letter that he had just received, which appeared to him as an intolerable presumption on the part of her who had once been his daughter and which now reminded him bitterly of the past. An acrid taste came into his mouth at his own recollection whilst the salt, smoked fish which he had eaten for breakfast made him feel parched and thirsty; outside the "Fitter's Bar" he deliberately paused and, fortified by Nancy's parting remark, muttered, "Gad, but I'm dry, and I'm half an hour late as it is. I may as weel make a job o' it while I'm about it."

He went in with a half -defiant glance over his shoulder at the block of offices that lay opposite and, when he emerged, a quarter of an hour later, his bearing had regained something of its old challenging assertion. In this manner he entered the main swing doors of the offices and, threading the corridors, now with the facility of habit, entered his own room with his head well in ihe air, surveying in turn the two young clerks who looked up from their work to greet him.

"Has that auld, nosey pig been round yet?" he demanded; "because if he has, I don't give a tinker's curse about it."

"Mr. Blair?" replied one of the pair. "No! he hasn't been round yet!"

"Humph!" cried Brodie, fiercely annoyed at the sudden feeling of relief which had swept involuntarily over him. "I suppose ye think I'm lucky. Well! Let me tell ye both that I don't give a damn whether he knows I've been late or not. Tell him if ye like! It's all one to me," and, flinging his hat upon a peg and his stick into a corner, he sat heavily down upon his stool. The other clerks exchanged a glance and after a slight pause, the spokesman of the two remarked diffidently;

"We wouldn't say a word, Mr. Brodie. You surely know that, but look here, you're wringing wet will you not take your jacket off and dry it?"

"No! I'll not take it off!" he replied roughly, opening his ledger, lifting his pen and beginning to work; but after a moment he raised his head and said in a different tone, "But thank ye all the same You're good lads both and I know you've lent me a hand in the past. The truth is, I've had some news that upset me, so I'm just not quite my usual this mornin'."

They knew something of his affdirs from certain bouts of rambling dissertations during the past months and the one who had not yet spoken remarked:

"Not Nessie, I hope, Mr. Brodie?"

"No!" he answered. "Not my Nessie! She's as right as the mail, thank God, workin' like a trooper and headin' straight for the Latta! She's never given me a moment's trouble. It was just something else, but I know what to do. I can win through it like I've done with all the rest."

They forbore to question him further and the three resumed work in a silence broken only by the scratching of pens on paper, the rustle of a turning page, the restless scrape of a stool and the mutter from Brodie's lips as he strove to concentrate his fogged brain in the effort to contend with the figures before him.

The forenoon had advanced well upon its course when a precise step sounded in the corridor outside and the door of the room opened to admit the correct figure of Mr. Blair. With a sheaf of papers in his hand he stood for a moment, adjusting his gold-rimmed pince-nez upon his elevated nose, and scrutinising at some length the three clerks now working under his severe eyes. His gaze eventually settled upon the sprawling form of Brodie from whose damp clothing the steam now rose in a warm, vaporous mist, and as he looked his glance became more disapproving; he cleared his throat warningly and strode forward, fluttering the papers in his grasp like feathers of his ruffled plumage. "Brodie," he began sharply, "a moment of your attention, please!"

Without changing his posture Brodie lifted his head from the desk and regarded the other mordantly.

"Well," he replied, "what is it this time?"

"You might get up when you address me," expostulated Blair. "Every other clerk does so but you. It's most irregular and unusual."

"I'm a kind o' unusual man, ye see; that's maybe the reason o' it," retorted Brodie slowly. "I'm just as well where I am! What is't you're wantin'?"

"These accounts," shot out the other angrily. "Do you recognize them? If you don't, I may inform you that they represent your work or so-called work! Every one of them is in error. Your figures are wrong the whole way through and your total is outrageously incorrect. I'm sick of your blundering incompetence, Brodie! Unless you can explain this I shall have to report the whole matter to my superior."

Brodie glowered from the papers to the other's starched and offended face, and, filled by a sense of the insupportable indignity of his position he replied sullenly, in a low voice:

"I did the best I could. I can do no more."

"Your best is not good enough, then," retorted Blair in a high, almost a shrill tone. "Lately your work has become atrociously bad and your behaviour is, if anything, worse. Your very appearance is lowering to the dignity of this office. I'm sure if Sir John knew he would never permit it. Why," he stuttered, choked by indignation, "already your breath is reeking with the smell of drink. It's abominable!"

Brodie sat quite still, his eyes lowered, his mind blurred, wondering if it were he, James Brodie, who remained passive under the insults of this primly insignificant creature. He saw himself leap up, seize the other by the throat, shake him within an inch of his life then hurl him, as he had hurled a man twice his size, ignominiously out of the door. But no, he was still sitting motionless upon his stool, muttering in a dull voice:

"My time is my own outside this place. I can use it how I like."

"You must come to this office in a fit condition to work," insisted Blair coldly. "You're a bad example to these young men here the look of you is a slur on the whole place!"

"Leave my appearance alone, damn you," ground out Brodie with a sudden fierceness. "I'd rather be as I am than have your smug face on me."

"None of your impertinence, please," cried Blair, a flush rising to his pale countenance. "Ill report you for insolence."

"Well, leave me alone," cried Brodie, looking up from his crouched position on the desk like a wild animal, broken by captivity, but still ferocious. "Don't push me too far or it'll be the worse for ye."

A sense of the latent danger to himself in the other's wild eye restrained Blair from further disparaging comment but, thrusting the file of papers disdainfully upon Brodie's desk, he remarked icily:

"Let me have these corrected at once faultless, if you please or I'll know the reason of it!" Then, turning, he stepped formally out of the office.

With the closing of the door no outburst occurred, but the stillness of the room became more oppressive than any storm. Brodie sat like an effigy in stone, turning over within his mind the insults he had just endured; feeling, in his humiliation, that the combined glances of the other two were fixed upon him derisively. Out of the corner of his eye he observed a hand appear over the edge of his desk and silently remove the offending accounts and, although he knew that he was again being aided through the good nature of his colleagues, the hard-hewn moroseness of his features did not relax. He sat thus for an interminable time without lifting his pen, observed, without speaking, the corrected documents slide back again in front of him, maintained his attitude of rigid indifference until the dinner whistle blew at one o'clock; then he rose immediately from his stool, seized his hat and walked quickly from the room. Some insults might be washed out in blood, but he now sought urgently, in a different manner, to eradicate the memory of his indignity.

When he returned, punctual to the hour, at two o'clock he was altered, as though some mysterious, benign influence had been at work upon him, potently dispersing his melancholy, smoothing the harsh outlines of his face, injecting into his veins a fluid gaiety which now coursed through him joyously and emanated radiantly from his being.

"I'm here first, lads, ye see," he cried with a heavy facctiousness, as the two other clerks appeared together shortly after he had arrived, "and on the stroke of the clock too! But what do you mean by comin' in late? It's abominable. If you don't improve your blunderin' irregularity I’ll report you to your superior that pasty pie-face that was in here this morninY' He laughed boisterously and

continued, "Can you not take your example from me that's held up to you as such a paragon o virtue?"

"You're in fettle now, Mr. Brodie," doubtfully replied one of the youngsters.

"And what for no'," he exclaimed. "I wouldna let a thing like what happened this forenoon put me down. Not on your life, my mannie. It was just the thought of other considerations that forbade me to wring the puir creature's stiff neck for him. You know," he continued confidentially, "he's aye been jealous o' the way I got into this office under his very nose, but I had the influence and he couldna

prevent it." He drew his pipe from his pocket, rapped it noisily against the desk and began to fill it.

"You're not goin' to smoke, Mr. Brodie," cried the first clerk, looking up from his ledger in some concern. "You know it's strictly forbidden."

Brodie glowered at him, swinging a little on his stool, as he answered:

"And who would stop me ? I'll do as I like in here. A man like me shouldna have to beg and pray for permission to light his pipe."

He effected this action now, defiantly, sucking noisily and flinging the spent match disdainfully upon the floor. Then, with a profound movement of his head, between puffs he resumed, "No! and I'm not agoin' to do it. Gad! If I had my rights, I wouldna be sittin' in this rotten office. I'm far above this kind o' work, far above any kind o' work. That's true as death, but it just canna be proved, and I've got to thole things as best I can. But it doesna alter me. No! By God, no! There's many a man in this Borough would be glad to have the blood

that runs in my veins." He looked around for approval but, observing that his listeners, tired of the stale recitation of his pretentions, had bowed their heads in a feigned indifference, he was displeased; none the less he turned their defection to account by producing a small, flat bottle from his hip, quickly applying it to his lips, and stealthily returning it to his pocket. Thus refreshed, he continued, as though unconscious of their lack of attention, "Blood will tell! There's nothing truer than that. I'll come up again. It's nothing but a lot of rotten jealousy that's put me here; but it'll not be for long. Ye can't keep a good man down. I'll soon be back again where folks'll recognise me again for what I am, back at the Cattle Show, rubbin’ shoulders with the Lord Lieutenant o' the County and on the best o' terms equal terms, mind ye" he emphasised this to the air by a jerk o' his pipe "ay, on equal terms with the finest blood in the county and with my name standin' out brawly in the paper amongst them all." As he viewed the future by regarding the glory of the past, his eye moistened, his lower lip drooped childishly, his breast heaved and he muttered, "God! That's a grand thing to happen to a man."

"Come on now, Mr. Brodie," entreated the other clerk, breaking in upon his meditation, "put away your pipe now you've had a smoke. I don't want to see you getting into trouble."

Brodie glowered at him for an instant then suddenly guffawed:

"Man, you're awfu' feared. True enough, it's as you say. I've had a smoke, but I'm goin' to have another and more than that I'm goin' to have a dram as well!" He slyly produced the bottle again and, whilst they watched him with startled eyes, partook of a long pull.

Instead of returning the flask to his pocket, he stood it before him on top of his desk, remarking, "Yell be handier for me there, hinny, and I can look at ye as well and watch ye goin' down inch by inch.”

Then, flattered to find himself the focus of their anxious stares, he continued, "Speakin’ of trouble there's one thing that little runt said to me this mornin' that was so ridiculous it's stuck in my head." He frowned prodigiously at the very memory. "I think I mind of him sayin' 'the look o' ye is a slur on the whole place' ay, that was it these were his very words. Now tell me, lads what the devil was he talkin' about? Is there anything wrong with my appearance?"

He glared at them with a bellicose mien whilst they shook their heads from side to side doubtfully. "I'm a fine-lookin' man, am I not?" he shot at them, watching their silent assent with a large and exaggerated approval. "I knew it," he cried, "It was just his measly spite. Ay! I was always a grand upstandin' figure of a man, well set up, with a skin on me as clear as a bairn's. Besides," he continued, looking at them sideways, craftily, as he stroked the coarse stubble on his sallow chin with a rustling sound, "there's another reason why I know he's wrong. Ye're maybe ower young to hear but it's no harm to tell ye that a certain lass ay, the bonniest in Levenford, puts me first abune everybody else. Odd, I maun have a drink at the very thought of her."

He drank a toast with decorous solemnity in honour of the loveliest lady in Levenford and was for some time silent whilst he considered her happily. He wanted to talk about her, to boast proudly of her attractions, but a shadow of restraint held him back and, searching with contracted brows amongst the recesses of his mind for the reason of his reserve, a sudden illumination shone upon him. He became aware that he could not speak more freely about her because she was not his wife. At this startling realisation of his mused brain he silently reviled himself for his negligence. "Losh," he muttered to himself, "ye havena acted fair, man. Ye should have thought on this before." He shook his head deprecatingly, took another swig of spirits to assist his meditations, and a profound pathos for the plight of Nancy seized him as he whispered in a maudlin tone, "I believe I'll do it. By God! I will do it for her." He almost shook hands with himself at the nobility of the sudden resolution he had formed to make an honest woman of her. True, she was not of much consequence in the social scale, but what of it; his name would cover her, cover them both, and if he married her he would, in one magnificent gesture, keep her more securely in the house, put himself right in the eyes of the town and still for ever these sad, questioning glances which he had observed from time to time on Nessie's face. He banged his fist on the desk, crying out, "I'll do it! I'll mention it this very night," then, grinning at the strained faces before him he remarked, with an assumption of lofty rectitude, "Don't be alarmed, lads. I've just been planning out things and I've just decided to do something for my wee Nessie. She's well worth it." Then, lowering his elevated tone, he leered at them cunningly and added, "A little matter of domestic policy that you're sure to hear of sooner or later." He was about to enlighten them more lucidly when one of the clerks, perceiving perhaps in advance the drift of the revelations that might follow, hurriedly sought to deflect his attention by exclaiming:

"And how is Nessie getting on, Mr. Brodie?"

He blinked for a moment at the questioner before replying:

"Fine! Ye know she's gettin' on fine. Dinna ask stupid questions, man. She's got the Latta in her pocket already."

Then, launching out on this fresh subject that now presented itself to his muddled mind he continued, "She's a great comfort to me, is that lass. To see her puttin' a spoke in that young Grierson's wheel time after time is a rich treat to me. She always beats him, ye know and every time she does it, it must be gall and wormwood to that smooth sneakin' father o' his. Ay! Gall and wormwood it must be!"

He sniggered at the very reflection of it and, with a more acute tilt of the bottle to his mouth, was emptying it completely of its contents when, failing in the attempt to laugh and drink simultaneously, he choked and burst into a prolonged fit of hoarse coughing. "Pat my back, damn ye," he gasped with congested face and running eyes as he bent forward, heaving like a sick and emaciated elephant. "Harder! Harder!" he cried as one of the others, leaping from his stool, began to thump his bowed back.

"That's a nasty cough," said the young fellow when the paroxysm had finally abated. "That's what comes of sitting in damp clothes."

"Bah! It wasna a hoast at all that," replied Brodie, wiping his face with his sleeve. "I've never wore a coat yet and I never will. I've lost my umbrella somewhere, but it doesna matter; the rain aye seems to do me good. I'm strong as a Clydesdale stallion," and he extended his gaunt structure to show them the manner of man he was.

"Nessie doesn't take after you, Mr. Brodie," remarked the first speaker. "She doesna look too strong!"

Brodie glowered at him, exclaiming angrily:

"She's as sound as a bell. Are you another o' these safties that are aye trying to make our folks to be ill. She's as right as the mail, I tell you. She had a wee bit turn last month, but it was nothing. I had her at Lawrie and he said she had a heid on her in a thousand ay, in a million, I would say!" He glanced around triumphantly, looked to the bottle to express his elation, but, observing that it was empty, seized it and with a fortunate aim hurled it into the waste-paper basket in the corner whence it was later retrieved and cast into the Leven through the charity of one of his long-suffering colleagues.

"That's an aim for ye," he cried gaily. 'Tve got an eye in my head! I could bring down a running rabbit at fifty paces without a blink. A rabbit! Damnation! If I was where I should be, I would be at the butts bringing down the grouse and the pheasants like droppin' hailstones." He was about to embark once more on the nobility of his estate when suddenly his eyes fell upon the clock. "Gad! Would ye believe it. It's nearly five o'clock. I'm the man to pass the hours away." He cocked his eye facetiously, snickered and resumed, "Time passes quick when you're workin' hard, as that stickit whelp Blair would say. But I'm afraid I must leave ye, lads. Ye're fine fellows and I'm gey an' fond o' ye, but I've something more important to attend to now." He rubbed his hands together in a delightful anticipation and added, with a leer, "If the fancy man comes in before five just tell him his accounts are in order and say I've gone to buy him a rattle." He got off his stool ponderously, slowly assumed his hat, adjusting it twice before the tilt of its dusty brim pleased him, picked up his heavy stick and stood with a gravity now definitely drunken, framing the doorway with his swaying bulk.

"Lads!" he cried, apostrophising them with his stick, "if ye knew where I was goin' now, the eyes would drop out your heads for pure jealousy. You couldna come, though. No! No! There's only one man in this Borough could gang this bonnie, bonnie gait." Surveying them impressively he added, with great dramatic gusto, "And that's me!" swept their forbearing but disconcerted faces with a final glare and swung slowly out of the room.

His star was in the ascendant, for as he strode noisily along the passages, bumping from side to side in his erratic career, he met no one and, at five minutes to five, shot through the main swing doors into the open and set his course for home.

The rain had now ceased and the air came fresh and cool in the darkness through which the newly lighted lamps shimmered upon the wet streets, like an endless succession of topaz moons upon the surface of black, still water. The regular repetition of these reflections, each one of which seemed to float insidiously towards him as he walked, amused Brodie monstrously, and he grinned as he told himself he would assuredly inform Nancy of his experience with this strangely inverted celestial phenomenon. Nancy! He chuckled aloud at the consideration of all they had to talk of to-night, from the composition of a real stinger of a letter for that one in London to the delicious proposition which he had determined to put before her. She would, of course, be perturbed to see him return with perhaps and he admitted this magnanimously to the darkness a heavier

dram in him than usual, but the sudden delight at his offer of matrimony would dispel all her annoyance. He knew she had always wanted an established position, the randy, such as a fine man like him could give her, and now he heard her overwhelmed voice exclaiming,

"Do ye mean it, Brodie! Losh! Man, ye've fair sweepit' me away. Marry ye? Ye know I would jump at the chance like a cock at a groset. Come till I give ye a grand, big hug." Yes! she would be kinder to him than ever after this sublime concession on his part and his eyes flickered at the thought of the especial manifestations of her favour which this should elicit from her to-night. As he advanced, warmly conscious that each staggering step took him nearer to her,- he could find no comparison strong enough to adequately describe her charm, her possessing hold upon him. "She's she's bonnie!" he muttered inarticulately; "the flesh o' her is as white and firm as the breist of a fine chicken. I could almost make a meal o' her." His thoughts grew more compelling, served to intensify his longing, to add to his excitement, and with a final rapid struggle he launched himself up the steps of his house, fumbled impatiently at the lock with his key, opened the door, and burst into the obscurity of the hall. "Nancy," he cried loudly, "Nancy! Here I am back for ye!"

He stood for a moment in the darkness, awaiting her answering cry, but, as she did not reply, he smiled fatuously to think that she should be hiding, waiting for him to go to her, and taking a box of matches from his pocket, he lit the lobby gas, planted his stick firmly in the stand, hung up his hat and went eagerly into the kitchen. This, too, was in darkness.

"Nancy," he shouted, in astonishment not unmixed with annoyance, "what are ye playin' at? I don't want a game o' blind man's buff. I want none o' these fancy tricks, woman! I want you. Come out from wherever ye be." Still there was no response, and, advancing awkwardly to the gas bracket above the mantlepiece he lit this gas, turned to survey the room, and to his amazement observed that the table was not laid, that no preparation for tea had been begun. For a moment he remained quite still, fixing the bare table with an astounded gaze, compressing his lips angrily, until suddenly a light seemed to break in upon him and he muttered slowly, with a loosening of his frown: "She's awa' to the station with that aunt of hers. Has not she the nerve, though? She's the only body that would

dare to do it. Sends me out for my dinner and then keeps me waitin' for my tea."

A faint thrill of amusement ran through him, deepening to a roar of laughter as he contemplated, almost proudly, her hardihood. Gad, but she was a fit mate for him ! Yet when his mirth had subsided he did not quite know what to do, presumed eventually that he must await the pleasure of her return and, standing with his back to the fireplace, he allowed his gaze to wander idly around the room. To him, the very atmosphere breathed of her presence; he saw her flitting airily about, sitting nonchalantly in his armchair, smiling, talking, even flighting him. Yes! the very hatpin sticking into the dresser was an indication of her own saucy, impudent, inimitable indifference.

But something else lay upon the dresser, held in place by that pin, a letter that presumptuous communication which he had received at breakfast time from his daughter and moving forward he took it up disdainfully in his hands. Suddenly his expression changed, as he observed that it was not the same envelope but another, addressed to him in his son's sloping clerkly hand, a penmanship so like Matt's own smooth plausibility that it had always irritated him. Another letter! And from Matthew! Was the sly, sneaking coward soafraid of him now that he must write his messages instead of delivering them face to face like a man? Filled by a profound contempt he gazed at the neat writing on the envelope which, however, became modified, as, tilting his head to one side he considered incon sequently how well his own name looked almost as well as in print in these precise characters now before him. James Brodie, Esquire! It was a name to be proud of, that one! Smiling a little, a large and lordly appreciation swept over him, restoring him again to complacency and, in the excess of his own satisfaction, he carelessly tore open the letter and pulled out the single sheet within.

"Dear Father," he read, 'Tou were too high and mighty to hear about my new post or you would have learned that it was a position for a married man. Don't expect Nancy back. She's come to see that I don't fall off my horse! Your loving and obedient son, Matt."

Seized by a vast stupefaction, he read over the scanty words twice, looked up unseeingly, as he muttered incredulously:

"What does he mean? What has Nancy got to do with the fool's horse? Your loving and obedient son the man must be mad!"

Then suddenly, blindingly, he felt that he too was mad, as the purport of the note penetrated his dull, fuddled brain, as he observed upon the back of the paper, scrawled in Nancy's childish, illiterate hand these words: "Matt and me are off to be married and have a high old time. You were too fond of your bottle to marry me so you can take it to bed with you the night. You auld fool!”

A great cry burst from his lips. At last he understood that she had left him. The letter faded from his sight, the room swung round and away from him, he was alone in a vast immensity of blackness. Out of his distorted face his wounded eyes gazed dumbly from below his brow, now corroded by the full knowledge of his loss. Matt, his own son, had taken Nancy from him! In the shock of his despair he felt it would have been better far had he been killed outright by that pistol bullet in the house in the Vennel, that this blow his son had delivered was more frightful, more agonising than death! His weakling and despised son had triumphed over him. Complete understanding of the deception to which he had been subjected in the past week flashed upon him Nancy's indifference, followed by her assumed yet restrained affection, the locking of her door, the fictitious relation at Overton, the complete obliteration of Matthew from the house he understood all; remembered, too, the scene where he had surprised them in the kitchen, when she had broken the cup at the very moment that he questioned his son about the post. God! What a fool he had been. "An auld fool!" that was what she called him, and how she must have laughed at him ; how they must both be mocking him now. He knew nothing, neither how they had gone nor where they had gone. He was powerless, knowing only that they were together, powerless except to stand and think of them in an inconceivable intimacy which made him writhe with anguish.

He was recalled from his dark oblivion, like an insensible man to whom consciousness momentarily returns, by the voice of Nessie who, entering the kitchen, gazed fearfully at him and murmured timidly:

"Will I make some tea for you, Father? I've not had any tea or any dinner either."

He lifted his tortured face, looked at her stupidly, then cried thickly:

"Go away! Go to the parlour. Go to your lessons. Go anywhere, but let me alone!"

She fled from him and he sank again into the torment of his thoughts, filled by a profound self-pity as he realised that there was now no one to look after him or Nessie but his dotard and incapable mother. She would have to come back Mary, his daughter!

He would have to allow her to return and keep the house, if only for Nessie's sake. Mary must now come back! The full significance of his discussion of this matter with Nancy struck him like a fresh blow as he recollected how he had coaxed her to write the letter of refusal. And she had known all the time that she was leaving him. He had been too late with his offer of marriage; and now, how would he ever do without her? A piercing anguish took him as he thought of her, even now, in his son's arms, opening her lips to his kisses, offering her firm, white body gladly to his embrace. As though vainly to obliterate the torture of the vision, he raised his hand and pressed it upon his throbbing eyes, whilst his lips twisted painfully and a hard, convulsive sob burst from his swelling breast and echoed through the quiet of the room.

THE three-twenty train from Glasgow to Ardfillan, the first half of the journey accomplished successfully, had left Overton behind, and traversing the low, dripping, smoke-filled arches of Kilmaheu Tunnel, emerged into the breezy March afternoon with a short, triumphant whistle that sent a streamer of steam swirling behind the engine like a pennant, and presently began to coast gently down the

flight incline of the track which marked the approach to Levenford Station. The train was lightly laden, having many of its carriages empty and several with but one passenger in each and, as though conscious of having achieved the sharp ascent of Poindfauld and traversed the dark, grimed caverns of Kilmaheu, it now proceeded at an easier and more leisured pace through the soft, dun countryside

across which the railway track advanced like a long, narrowing furrow.

Within the train, alone in a compartment, in a corner facing the - engine, and with the small portmanteau that constituted her entire luggage beside her, sat a girl. Dressed in a plain, grey costume of serviceable, inexpensive serge, shaped to a neat yet unfashionable cut, and wearing upon her dark, close-coiled hair a grey velvet hat relieved only by a thin, pink ribbon gathered at one side into a simple bow, she remained upright yet relaxed, directing her gaze out of the window, viewing eagerly, yet wistfully, each feature of the fleeting landscape. Her face was thin, the nose straight and fine, the nostrils delicate, the lips sensitive and mobile, the smooth, pale sweep of the brow accentuated by the dark, appealing beauty of her eyes; and upon the entire countenance lay a melancholy sweetness, a pure and clarified sadness, as though some potent, sorrowful experience had stamped upon every lineament the subtle yet ineradicable mark of suffering. This faint, sombre shadow which lightly touched, accentuating even, the dark beauty of the face, made her seera more mature than her actual age of twenty-two years and gave to her an appearance of arresting delicacy, of refined sincerity which was intensified by the severe simplicity of her apparel. Like the face, but in a different sense, her hands, too, immediately engaged attention, as, denuded of gloves, which lay upon her knee, they rested lightly, palm upwards, passive upon her lap. The face was that of a Madonna but the hands, red, conspicuous, coarse-grained and slightly swollen, were the hands of a servant; and if it was suffering which had sublimated the face to a more exquisite beauty, the hands spoke eloquently of bitter toil that had blemished them into this pathetic, contrasting ugliness.

As she gazed intently out of the window she remained quiescent, passive as her own work-worn hands, yet across her sensitive features a faint excitement quivered which betokened the inner agitation of her turbulently beating heart. There, she thought, was the Mains farm, its brown, furrowed fields lapped by the wind-beaten, crested waters of the Estuary, its stack yard a square, yellow patch against the iow, white- washed huddle of the homestead; there, too, was the weathered pile of the Linten Lighthouse, and, equally unchanged, the blue, massive outlines of the Rock itself; there, against the sky, the long, skeleton tracery of the Latta shipyards, and now, swinging into view, the sharp, stippled steeple of the Borough Hall. Affected by the touching familiarity of all that she saw, she considered how unaltered everything was, how permanent, secure and solid. It was she, Mary Brodie, who had changed, and she now longed wistfully to be as she had been when she had lived in these surroundings, before the branding iron of circumstance had set its seal upon her. As she meditated thus, with a sudden, wrenching pang like the tearing open of a wound, she observed the Levenford Cottage Hospital where for two months she had lain facing death, where, too, her infant child had died; and, at the sudden poignant reminder, the serenity of her countenance broke and though no tears flowed they had all been shed before her lips quivered painfully. She marked the window through which her fixed eyes had ceaselessly sought the sky, the gravel walk flanked by laurel bushes along which she had directed the first, flagging steps of her convalescence, the very gatepost to which she had then clung, fluttering and exhausted from the feebleness of her state. She willed the train to stop that she might linger with her memories, but it bore her quickly away from this sad reminder of the past and, circling the last bend, gave to her spasmodic, transient glimpses of Church Street, a line of shops, the Public Library, the Cross, then swept her into the station itself.

How small the platform seemed, with its diminutive waiting rooms and insignificant wooden ticket office, yet when she had once stood in this same station to take the train for Darroch she had, in the agitation of her adventure, trembled at its very magnitude; and, indeed, she trembled now as she realised that she must leave the solitary seclusion of her compartment and venture forth into the public gaze. She stood up firmly, gripping her portmanteau, and although a faint colour tinged her cheeks, she set her soft lips into the mould of fortitude and stepped bravely out upon the platform. She was back again in Levenford after four years!

To the porter who approached, she surrendered her bag with instructions that it should be delivered to her at the next round of the station van and, having given up her ticket, she descended the short flight of steps to the street and set out with a throbbing bosom for her home. If she had been beset by memories in the train, now they rushed in upon her with an overpowering force, and it seemed to her as if each step she took brought before her some fresh remembrance to further strain her already bursting heart. There was the Common, fringed in the distance by the Leven; here was the school she had attended as a child; and, as she passed the portals of the Public Library, still guarded by the same swing doors, she became aware that it was here, on this very spot, that she had first met Denis. The thought of Denis brought no pang, no bitterness, but now merely a sad regret, as though she felt herself no longer his beloved nor yet the victim of his love, but only the helpless puppet of an irresistible destiny.

While she proceeded along Railway Road she observed coming towards her a woman whom she had known in the days before her banishment and she settled herself for the wound of a sharp, contemptuous glance; but no glance came, no sharp wound, for the other drew near and passed her with the placid countenance of complete unrecognition. How much I must have changed, thought Mary sadly, as she entered Wellhall Road and, coming upon Doctor Renwick's house, she wondered with a curious detachment if he too might find her changed, should she ever encounter him. He had been so good to her, that even to pass this dwelling moved her strangely. While she did not consider the fact that he had saved her life, as though this were of slight importance, she remembered vividly the letters he had written her first when she had gone to London and later to inform her of her mother's illness and subsequently of her death all filled with a kind and unmistakable sympathy. She might never have returned to Levenford but for these letters, for, had she not received the second, she would not have written home and Nessie would never have known her address to send her that frantic appeal. Poor, frightened Nessie! Thoughts of her sister and of her father now invaded her, and as she drew near to her home, with the memory of the night on which she had left it stamped like an indelible background upon her mind, she became outwardly agitated; the calm, long-set tranquillity of her appearance was at last melted by the warm, surging currents set racing by the unwonted action of her fast beating heart.

Again she felt herself tremble at the prospect of meeting her father; she shuddered slightly as, of her own volition, she moved towards the oppressive influence of the dwelling which had once contained her like a prisoner.

When, finally, she reached her home, it was with a shock that she observed the outer aspect of the house, wondering, in her first bewilderment, if it were she who viewed it with different eyes, but in a moment noting more intently the subtle, individual alterations which gave it an appearance at once slovenly and sordid. The windows were dirty, with such curtains as veiled them soiled and draggled, with blinds hanging unevenly; in the turret one small window was open and uncovered, the other completely shuttered, like a closed eye, so that the face of the tower winked at her with a fixed, perpetual leer. The clean, grey stone of the frontage was stained by a long, irregular, rusty smear, drawn by the rush of water from a broken gutter, and straggling across the house face like a defilement; the gutter sagged, a slate drooped drunkenly from the straight line of the eaves, whilst the courtyard in front was empty, unraked, and green with weeds.

Startled by these slight but revealing variations which so transfigured the exterior of the house, and stirred with a sudden fear of what she might discover within, Mary moved quickly up the steps and rang the bell. Her trepidation increased as she stood for a long time waiting, but at last the door opened slowly and she beheld, against the dimness beyond, the thin, unformed figure of Nessie. The sisters looked at each other, exclaimed together "Nessie!" "Mary!" then, with a mingling cry, rushed into each other's arms.

"Mary! Oh, Mary!" Nessie cried brokenly, unable in her emotion to do more than repeat the name and clinging to her sister in utter abandon. "My own, dear Mary!"

"Nessie! Dear Nessie!" whispered Mary, herself overcome by an excess feeling. "I'm so happy to see you again. I've often longed for this when I've been away."

"You'll never leave me any more, will you, Mary?" sobbed Nessie. "I've wanted you so much! Hold me tight and never let me go."

"I'll never leave you, dearie! I've come back just to be with you!"

"I know! I know!" wept Nessie. "It's good of you to do it, but, oh! I've needed you sorely since Mamma died. I've had nobody! I've been frightened!"

"Don't cry, dearest," whispered Mary, drawing her sister's head against her breast and gently stroking her brow. "You're all right, now. Don't be frightened any more."

"You don't know what I've come through," cried Nessie frantically. "It's like Heaven to see you back; but it's a wonder I'm here at all."

"Hush, dearie, hush I don't want you to upset yourself and be ending up with a sore, wee head."

"It's my heart that's been sore," said the younger sister, turning up her red-lidded, burning eyes. "I didn't love you enough when I had you, Mary, but I'll make up for it. Everything's so different now. I need you so much I'll do anything, if you'll just bide with me."

"I'll do that, dear," replied Mary consolingly. "Just dry your eyes and you can tell me all about it. Here's my handkerchief for you!"

"It's just like old times for you to give me this," sniffed Nessie, releasing her sister's arm, taking the proffered handkerchief, and applying it to her wet face. "I was aye losing mine." Then, as her sobs subsided and she regarded her sister from a slight distance, she exclaimed suddenly, "How bonnie you've got, Mary! There's a look about your face that makes me want never to take my eyes off you."

"It's just the same old face, Nessie."

"No! You were always bonnie, but now there's something seems to shine out of it like a light."

"Never mind about me," replied Mary tenderly. "It's you I'm thinking of, dear. We'll need to see about putting some flesh on these thin arms of yours. You've been needing some one to look after you."

"I have, indeed," answered Nessie pathetically, looking down at her own unsubstantial form. "I can't eat anything. We've had such bad food lately. It was all because of that that " She threatened to break down again.

"Hush, pettie, hush don't cry again," whispered Mary. "Tell me some other time."

"I can't wait to tell you," cried Nessie hysterically, her words coming in a rush. "My letter told you nothing. We've had a terrible woman in the house and she's run away with Matt to America. Father was nearly out of his head and he -does nothing but drink from mornin' till night, and oh! Mary! He's driving me on to study so much that it's just killing me. Don't let him do it, Mary will you? You'll save me, won't you, Mary?" and she held her hands out beseechingly towards her sister.

Mary stood quite still; the torrent of the other's speech had overwhelmed her. Then she said slowly, "Is Father changed, Nessie? Is he not good to you now?"

"Changed!" whimpered Nessie. "He's so changed you wouldn't know him. It frightens me to see him sometimes. When he's not had whiskey he's like a man walkin' in a dream. You wouldn't believe the change in everything" she continued with a rising voice and, seizing her sister's arm, she began to draw her towards the kitchen "you wouldn't believe it unless you saw it. Look here! Come and see the sight of this room," and she flung open the door widely as though to demonstrate visibly the extent of the alteration in the circumstances of her life.

Mary stood dumbly envisaging the frowsy room, then she looked it Nessie and said wonderingly:

"Does Father put up with this?"

"Put up with it!" cried the other; "he doesn't even notice it, and he looks worse even than this room, with his clothes hanging off him, and his eyes sunk away down in his head. If I try to lay a finger on the place to clear it up he roars my head off and keeps shouting at me to get on with my work and threatens me in all manner of ways, simply scares me out of my wits."

"Is it a’ bad as that, then?" murmured Mary, almost to herself.

"It's worse," cried Nessie mournfully, looking up at her sister with wide eyes. "Grandma does the best she can, but she's near helpless now. Nobody can manage him. You and me better go away somewhere quick before anything happens to us." Her attitude seemed to entreat her sister to fly instantly with her from the ruins of their home. But Mary shook her head, and speaking firmly, cheerfully, said:

"We can't run away, dear. We'll do the best we can together. I'll soon have the place different for you," and, advancing to the window, she threw it up and let a gust of the cool, sharp wind come rushing into the room. "There, now; we'll let the breeze in for a little, while we have a walk in the back, then I'll come in and straighten things out." She took off her hat and coat and, laying them on the sofa, turned again to Nessie, put her arm round the other's thin waist, and drew her out of the back door into the outer air.

"Oh, Mary!" cried Nessie ecstatically, pressing her side close against her sister as the two began to walk slowly up and down. "It's wonderful to have you back. You're so strong, I've an awful faith in you. Surely things will go right now." Then she added inconsequently, "What's been happening to you? What have you been doing all this time?"

Mary held out her free hand for a moment.

"Just using these," she said lightly; "and hard work never killed anybody, so here I am."

The younger girl looked with a shocked gaze at the rough calloused palm, seared by a deep white scar; and turning her eyes upwards remarked wonderingly:

"What gave you that big mark? Was it a cut ye got?"

A quick expression of pain flitted across Mary's face as she replied:

"That was it, Nessie; but it's all better now. I told you never to mind about your stupid old sister. It's wee you we're to think about."

Nessie laughed happily, then stopped short in amazement.

"Would ye believe it!" she exclaimed, in an awestruck tone; "that was me laughin' a thing I haven't done for months. Goodness! I could be downright 'happy if it wasn't for the thought of all the work for that old Bursary exam." She shivered exaggeratedly. "That's the worse thing of any."

"Will you not get it?" asked Mary solicitously.

"Of course I will!" exclaimed the other, with a toss of her head. "I mean to get it all right, just to show them all the way some of them have behaved to me at school is a disgrace. But it's Father. He goes on about it and worries me to death. I wish he would only leave me alone." She shook her head and added, in an old-fashioned tone that might have been her mother's voice, "My head's like to split the way he raves at me sometimes. He's got me away to a shadow."

Mary looked commiseratingly at the fragile form and thin precocious face beside her and, squeezing her sister's puny arm reassuringly, she said:

"I'll soon get you all right, my girl. I know exactly what to do and I've a few tricks up my sleeve that might surprise you."

Nessie turned, and using a favourite catchword of their childhood, remarked with an assumption or great simplicity:

"Is it honky-tonky tricks you've got up there, Mary?"

The sisters gazed at each other while the years fell away from them, then suddenly they smiled into each other's eyes and laughed aloud together, with a sound which echoed strangely in that desolate back garden.

"Oh! Mary," sighed Nessie rapturously, "this is better than I expected. I could hug you and hug you. You're lovely. I've got my bonnie, big sister back. Was it not brave of me to write and ask you to come back? If he had found me out he would have taken my head off. You'll not let on it was me, though, will you?"

"No, indeed," cried Mary fondly. "I'll not say a word."

"He'll be in soon," said Nessie slowly, her face falling again at the thought of her father's imminent return. "You know all about about his comin' to work in the Yard, I suppose."

A faint colour suffused Mary's cheeks as she answered:

"Yes! I heard about it, just after Mamma's death."

"Such a come-down!" said Nessie in a precocious tone. "Poor Mamma was well out of it. It would have finished her if the other hadn't." She paused and sighed, adding with a sort of sorrowful comfort, "I would like us to go up and put some flowers on her grave some day soon. There's not a thing on it not even an artificial wreath."

A silence now came between the sisters whilst each followed their own thoughts, then Mary started and said, "I must go in and see to things, dear. I want to get everything ready. You wait here in the air, for I think it'll do you good. Wait and see how nice I'll have everything for you."

Nessie gazed at her sister doubtfully.

"You're not going to run away and leave me?" she demanded, as though she feared to allow Mary out of her sight. "I'll come in and help you."

"Nonsense! I'm used to this work," replied Mary. "Your business is to stay here and get an appetite for tea."

Nessie loosed her sister's hand, and as she watched her go through the back door, cried warningly:

"I'll keep my eye on you through the window to see you don't go away."

Inside the house, Mary set to work to restore cleanliness and some degree of order to the kitchen and, having assumed an apron which she discovered in the scullery, and directing her activities with the precision of experience, she quickly burnished and blackened the grate, lit the fire and swept the hearth, scrubbed the floor, dusted the furniture and rubbed the window panes to some degree of brightness. Then, searching for the whitest table cover she could find, she spread this upon the table and commenced to prepare as appetising a tea as the scanty contents of the larder would permit. Standing there by the stove, flushed and a little breathless from the rapidity of her exertions, she seemed to have sloughed off the intervening years and as though she had never suffered the bitter experiences of her life to be again a girl engaged in getting ready the evening meal of the household. While she remained thus, she heard a slow shuffling tread in the lobby, followed by the creak of the kitchen door as it swung open, and turning, she observed the bowed and decrepit figure of old Grandma Brodie come hobbling into the room, diffidently, uncertainly, like a spectre moving among the ruin of its past glory. Mary left the stove, advanced, and called,

"Grandma!"

The old woman looked slowly up, presenting her yellow, cracked visage with its sunken cheeks and puckered lips, and staring incredulously, as though she too observed a phantom, she muttered at length,

"Mary! It canna surely be Mary." Then she shook her head, dismissing the evidence of her aged eyes as unthinkable, removed her gaze from Mary, and with an indeterminate step moved towards the scullery, whispering to herself:

"I maun get some tea thegither for him. James' tea maun be got ready."

"I'm getting the tea, Grandma," exclaimed Mary; "there's no need for you to worry about it. Come and sit in your chair," and taking the other's arm she led her, tottering but unresisting, to her old seat by the fire, into which the crone subsided with a vacant and unheeding stare. As Mary began, however, to journey to and fro from the scullery to the kitchen and the table assumed gradually an appearance such as it had not borne for months, the old woman's eye became more lucid and looking from a plate of hot pancakes, steaming and real, to Mary's face, she passed her blue-lined, transparent hand tremulously over her brows and muttered, "Does he know you're back?"

"Yes, Grandma! I wrote and said I was coming," replied Mary.

"Is he goin' to let you bide here?" croaked the other. "Maybe he'll put ye out again. When was that? Was it before Marg'et deed? I canna think. Your hair looks unco' bonnie that way." Her gaze then faded and she seemed to lose interest, murmuring disconsolately as she turned towards the fire, "I canna eat so weel without my teeth."

"Would you like a hot pancake and butter?" asked Mary in a coaxing tone.

"Would I no'!" replied the other instantly. "Where is't?"

Mary gave the old woman her pancake, saw her seize it avidly and, crouch ing over the fire, begin eagerly to suck it to its destruction. Suddenly she was aroused from her contemplation by a whisper in her ear:

"Please, I would like one too, Mary dear!" Nessie had come in and was now presenting a flatly suppliant palm, waiting to have it covered by the warm solace of a new-made pancake.

"You'll not have one; you'll have two," cried Mary recklessly. "Yes! As many as you like. I've made plenty."

"They're good," exclaimed Nessie appreciatively. "Good as good! You've made them so quick too; and my word, what a change you've made in the room! It's like old times again! As light as a feather! That's the way my mother used to make them, and these are just as good, ay, better than we used to get. Yum yum they're lovely!"

As Mary listened whilst Nessie talked on in this fashion and watched her quick, nervous gestures as she ate, she began to study her more intently than she had hitherto done, and slowly an impression of vague but deep uneasiness stole in upon her. The facile, running speech of her sister, the jerky and slightly uncontrolled movements perceptible now on her closer observation, seemed to betoken a state of unconscious nervous tension which alarmed her, and as she traced the thin contours of the other's growing body and noted her faintly hollowed cheeks and temples she said involuntarily:

"Nessie dear, are you sure you're feeling all right?"

Nessie stuffed the last of the pancake into her mouth before she replied expressively:

"I'm getting better and better especially since I've had that. Mary's pancakes are good but Mary herself is better." She chewed for a moment then solemnly added, "I've felt real bad once or twice, but I'm right as the mail now."

Her sudden idea was, of course, mere nonsense, thought Mary, but nevertheless she determined to use every effort in her power to obtain for Nessie some respite from the studies which seemed, at last, to be overtaxing the inadequate strength of her immature frame. A strong feeling, partly from love of her sister, but chieflv from a strong maternal impulse towards the other's weakness, gripped her, and she laid her arm protectingly round Nessie's narrow shoulders,

drew her close and murmured warmly, "I'll do my best for you, dear. I really will. There's nothing I wouldn't do to see you look happy and well."

Whilst the sisters stood together thus the old woman raised her head from the fire and, as she considered them, a sudden, penetrating insight seemed to flash through the obscurity of her senile mind, for she remarked sharply:

"Don't let him see ye like that. Don't hing thegither and show you're so fond o' one another in front of him. Na! Na! He'll have no interference wi' Nessie. Let her be, let her be." The edge in her voice was blunted as she uttered these last words, her gaze again became opaque and, with a slow, unconcealed yawn she turned away, muttering,

"I'm wantin' my tea. Is it not tea time yet? Is't not time for James to be in?"

Mary looked interrogatively at her sister and the shadow fell again on Nessie's brow as she remarked moodily:

"You can infuse the tea. He'll be in any minute now. Then you'll see for yourself the minute I've finished a cup it'll be the signal for me to be shoved off into the parlour. I'm tired to death of it."

Mary did not reply but went into the scullery to infuse the tea, and filled now by a sudden, private fear at the immediate prospect of meeting her father, the unselfish consideration of her sister slipped for the moment from her mind and she began to anticipate, tremblingly, the manner of his greeting. Her eyes, that were fixed unseeingly upon the steamy clouds issuing from the boiling kettle, flinched as she recollected how he had kicked her brutally as she lay in the hall, how that blow had been in part responsible for the pneumonia which had nearly killed her, and she wondered vaguely if he had ever regretted that single action; if he had, indeed, even thought of it during the four years of her absence. As for herself, the memory of that blow had lived with her for months; the pain of it had lasted during the long delirium of her illness, when she had suffered a thousand savage kicks from him with each stabbing repiration; the indignity had remained until long afterwards, when she would lie awake at night, turning in her mind the outrage upon her body of the inhuman impact of his heavy boot.

She thought again of these thick-soled boots which she had so often brushed for him, which she would, in her voluntary servitude, brush for him again, and as she remembered, too, the heavy tread which had habitually announced his entry, she started, listened, and once again heard his foot in the hall, slower, even sluggish, less firm, almost dragging, but still her father's step. The moment which she had foreseen, had visualised a thousand times, which, though she dreaded it, was of her own seeking, was upon her and, though she shook in all her limbs, she turned and advanced bravely, but with a fluttering heart, to meet him.

They came face to face in the kitchen, where the man who had come in looked at her silently, swept the room, the table, the brightly burning hearth with his dark eye, then returned his glance to her. Only when he spoke did she know actually that it was her father, when his old bitter sneer distorted his furrowed visage and he said:

"You've come back then, have ye?" and walked without further speech to his chair. The devastating change in him, such a change that she had failed almost to recognise him, shocked her so profoundly that she was unable to speak. Could this be her father, this old, shrunken man with his unkempt hair, his stained, untidy clothing, his morose unshaven face, his wild, wretched, malignant eye. Nessie had been right! She could not have believed the magnitude of this change until she had seen it, and even now she could scarcely credit the evidence of her eyes. In a dazed manner she moved herself forward and began to pour out and hand around the tea and, when she had accomplished this, she did not sit down with the others, but remained standing, waiting to serve them, still filled with an incredulous dismay at her father's dreadful appearance. He, on his part, continued to ignore her and to partake of his meal silently, with a careless, almost slovenly manner of eating, apparently regardless of what he consumed or the fashion in which he consumed it. His glance was distrait, oblique, and when it assumed a cognisance of his surroundings, it fell not upon her but always upon Nessie, as though some rooted conception of his brain was centred upon her,

making her the focus of his conscious attention. The others ate without speaking and, although she had not yet had the opportunity to address her father, to break that period of silence now four years long, she passed quietly out of the kitchen into the scullery, where she remained intent, listening and perturbed. When she had determined to sacrifice herself for Nessie's sake and return home, she had pictured herself in combat with an oppression of a different nature, loud, hectoring, even savage, but never with such a strange, inhuman preoccupation as this which she now felt to have possessed her father. His strong and virile character seemed, like his flesh, to have crumbled from him, leaving a warped structure of a man engrossed with something, she knew not what, which had mastered him and now controlled each thought, each action of his body.

She had been in the scullery only a few minutes considering him thus, when to her straining ears came the harsh, different sound of his voice, saying:

"You've finished, Nessie! You can get into the parlour and begin your work now!" Immediately she steeled herself and reentered the kitchen and, observing Nessie rising in a sad, dejected manner with a cowed look in her eyes to obey his command, at the submission of the child she felt a sudden rush of courage within her and in a quiet voice she addressed her father.

"Father, could Nessie not come for a walk with me before she begins her work?"

But he might have been deaf to her words and utterly oblivious of her presence, for any evidence which he manifested of having heard or seen her; continuing to look at Nessie, he resumed, in a harder tone:

"Off with you, now. And see you stick into it. I'll be in to see how you're getting on."

As Nessie went humbly out of the door, Mary bit her lip and flushed deeply, finding in his silent contempt of her first words to him the realisation of how he proposed to treat her. She could be there, but for him she would not exist! She made no comment, but when he had arisen from the table, and the old woman too had finished and gone out of the room, she began to clear away the dishes into the scullery, observing as she passed in and out of the kitchen that he had taken a bottle and glass from the dresser and had settled himself to drink steadily, with an appearance of habitual exactitude as though he proposed to continue imbibing regularly for the course of the entire evening.

She washed and dried the dishes, cleaned and tidied the scullery, then, with the intention of joining Nessie in the parlour, she entered the kitchen and was about to pass through it, when suddenly, and without looking at her, Brodie shouted from his corner in a fierce, arresting tone:

"Where are you going?"

She halted, looking at him appealingly as she replied:

"I was only going in to see Nessie for a moment, Father not to speak only to watch her."

"Don't go, then," he shot at her, still fixing his eye upon the ceiling and away from her. “I’ll do all the watching of Nessie that's required. You'll kindly keep away from her."

"But, Father," she faltered, "I'm not going to disturb her. I haven't seen her for so long I like to be near her."

"And I like that you shouldn't be near her," he replied bitterly. "You're not the company I want for my daughter. You can cook and work for her and for me too, but keep your hands off her. I'll brook no interference with her or with the work she's set on." This indeed was what she expected, and asking herself why she had come back if it were not to succour Nessie, she stood firmly contemplating him with her quiet gaze, then, mustering all her courage, she said:

"I'm going to Nessie, Father," and moved towards the door.

Only then he looked at her, turning the full force of his malignant eyes upon her, and seizing the bottle by his side he drew himself to his feet and advanced slowly towards her.

"Move another step towards that door," he snarled, "and I'll smash your skull open;" then, as though he hoped that she might disobey him, he stood confronting her, ready to swing fiercely at her head, She retreated, and as she slipped back from him he watched her sneeringly, crying, "That's better. That's much better! We'll have to teach ye manners again, I can see. But, by God! Keep away from Nessie and don't think you can fool me. No woman living can do that now. Another step and I would have finished ye for good."

Then suddenly his ferocious manner dropped from him and he returned to his chair, sat down and, sinking back into his original air of morose and brooding apathy, he resumed his drinking, not apparently for the achievement of gaiety, but as though in a vain, despairing endeavour to obtain oblivion from some secret and unforgettable misery.

Mary sat down at the table. She was afraid to leave the room. Her fear was not physical, not for herself, but for Nessie, and had she not been concerned solely for her sister, she would a moment ago have advanced straight into the threatening sweep of the weapon with which her father had menaced her. Life was of little value to her now, but nevertheless she realised that if she were to help Nessie from the frightful danger which threatened her in this house, she must be not only brave, but wise. She saw that her presence and, indeed, her purpose in the house would mean a bitcer perpetual struggle with her father for the possession of Nessie, and she felt that her own resources were insufficient to cope with this situation to which she had returned. As she sat there watching Brodie soak himself steadily, yet ineffectually, in liquor, she determined to seek assistance without delay and planned carefully what she would do on the following day. When her conception of what she must do lay clearly defined in her mind, she looked around for something to occupy her, but could find nothing no book to read no sewing which she might do, and she was constrained to remain still in the silence of the room, gazing at her father, yet never finding his gaze upon her.

The evening dragged slowly on with lagging hours until she felt that it would never end, that her father would never move, but at last he got up and saying, coldly, "You have your own room. Go to it, but leave Nessie alone in hers", went out and into the parlour where she heard his voice questioning, admonishing Nessie. She put out the light and went slowly upstairs to her own, old room where she undressed and sat down to wait, hearing first Nessie come up, then her father, hearing the sounds of their undressing, finally hearing nothing. Silence filled the house. She waited a long time in this small room where she had already known so much waiting and so much bitter anguish. Fleeting visions of the past rushed before her, of her vigils at the window when she gazed so ceaselessly at the silver trees, of Rose where was she now ? and the throwing of

the apple, of the storm, of her discovery, and in the light of her own sad experience she resolved that she would save Nessie from unhappiness, even at the sacrifice of herself, if it lay within her human power. At this thought she arose noiselessly, opened her door, crept across the landing without a sound, passed into Nessie's room, and slipped into bed beside her sister. She folded her arms around the cold, fragile figure of the child, chafing her frigid feet, warming her against her own body, stilling her sobs, comforting her in endearing whispers and at last soothing her into sleep. There, holding in her embrace the sleeping form of her sister, she remained awake long into the night, thinking.

VI

MARY looked at the picture which hung in solitary distinction against the rich, deep red background of the wall of the room with a rapt contemplation which removed her momentarily from the anxiety and confusion which beset her. She stood, her clear profile etched against the window beyond, head thrown back, lips faintly parted, her luminous eyes fixed absorbedly upon the painting out of which breathed a cool, grey mist that lay upon still, grey water, shrouding softly the tall, quiet trees as silvery as her own trees and sheathing itself around the thin, immobile wands of the rushes which fringed the pool; she was elevated from the confusion of mind in which she had entered this house by the rare and melancholy beauty of the picture which, exhibiting with such restraint this passive mood of nature, seemed to move from out its frame and touch her like a reverie, like a sad yet serene meditation upon the sorrow of her own life.

So engrossed was she by her consideration of the picture, which had caught her eye as she sat embarrassed amongst the tasteful furnishings of the room, so moved from her conflicting feelings by the strange, appealing beauty of the painting which had compelled her to rise involuntarily to stand before it, that she failed to observe the smooth movement of the polished mahogany door as it swung open upon its quiet hinges; nor did she observe the man who had entered the room, and who now gazed at her pale, transfigured profile with a sudden intentness, as silent and as entranced as her own contemplation of the picture. He stood as motionless as she did, as though afraid to break the spell which her appearance had laid upon him, but regarding her with pleasure; waiting, too, until she should have filled her eyes enough with the loveliness of the placid pool.

At last she withdrew her glance, sighed, turned unconsciously and, again raising her dark eyes, suddenly perceived him. Immediately all her dispelled confusion rushed back upon her, heightened now to the point of shame, and she flushed, hung her head as he advanced towards her and warmly took her hand.

"It is Mary," he said, "Mary Brodie come back again to see me."

With a great effort she forced her disconcerted gaze upwards, looked at him and replied in a low tone:

"You remember me then. I thought you would have forgotten all about me. I've I've changed so much."

"Changed!" he cried. "You haven't changed, unless it's that you're bonnier than ever! Tut! Don't look so ashamed of it, Mary. It's not a crime to look as lovely as you do."

She smiled faintly at him as he continued cheerfully, "As for forgetting you, how could I forget one of my first patients, the one who did me most credit, when I was struggling along with nothing in this very room but the empty packing case that my books had come in."

She looked round the present rich comfort of the room and, still slightly discomposed, she replied, at a tangent to her main thoughts:

"There's more than that here now, Doctor Renwick!"

"You see! That's what you've done for me," he exclaimed. "Made my name by your pluck in pulling through. You did the work and I got the credit!"

"It was only the credit you got," she replied slowly. "Why did you return the fee I sent you?"

"I got your address from the letter you that ran away without saying good-bye," he cried; "that was all the fee I wanted." He seemed strangely pleased to see her and strangely near to her, as though four years had not elapsed since he had last spoken to her and he still sat by her bedside compelling her back to life by his vital animation.

"Tell me all that you've been doing," he ran on, endeavouring to put her at her ease. "Wag your tongue! Let me see you haven't forgotten your old friends."

"I haven't forgotten you, Doctor, or I wouldn't be here now. I'll never forget all that you've done for me."

"Tuts! I don't want you to wag the tongue that way! I want to hear about yourself. Fm sure you've got all London on its knees before you by this time."

She shook her head at his words and, with a faint humour lurking in her eyes, replied:

"No! I've done the kneeling myself scrubbing floors and washing steps!"

"What!" he cried, in amazed concern. "You haven't been working like that?"

"I don't mind hard work," she said lightly. "It did me good; took my thoughts away from my own wretched troubles."

"You were never made for that sort of thing," he exclaimed reproachfully. "It's scandalous! It was downright wicked of you to run away as you did. We could have found something more suitable for you to do."

"I wanted to escape from everything then” she answered sadly. "I wished help from no one."

"Well, don't do it again," he retorted with some asperity. "Will you rush away like that again, without saying good-bye to a man?"

"No," she replied mildly.

He could not forbear to smile at her air of submission as he motioned her to sit down and, drawing a small chair close up beside her, said:

"I have been forgetting such manners as I have, to keep you standing like this, but really, Miss Mary, it is such a sudden and unexpected pleasure to see you again! You must be lenient with me." Then after a pause he asked, "You would get my letters? They were dismal reminders of this place, were they not?"

She shook her head.

"I want to thank you for them. I would never have known of Mamma's death if you hadn't written. Those letters brought me back."

He looked at her steadily and replied:

"I knew you would come back some day. I felt it." Then he added, "But tell me what has actually brought you back?"

"Nessie! My sister Nessie!" she said slowly. "Things have been dreadful at home and she has suffered. She needed me so I came home. It's because of her I've come to see you. It's a great liberty on my part after you’ve done so much for me already. Forgive me for coming! I need help!"

"Tell me how you wish me to help you and I'll do it," he exclaimed. "Is Nessie ill?"

"Not exactly ill," said Mary, "although somehow she alarms me; she is so nervous, so easily excited. She laughs and cries by turns and she has got so thin, seems to eat so little. But although it worries me, I really did not come about that." She paused for a moment, gathering courage to tell him, then continued bravely: "It is about my father. He treats her so peculiarly, not unkindly, but forcing her so unreasonably to work at her lessons, to study all the time, not only at school, but the whole long evening and every evening. She is shut up by herself and made to 'stick in' as he calls it, so that she will win the Latta Bursary. He has set his mind on that. She tells me that he throws it at her head every time she sees him, threatening her with all manner of penalties if she fails. If he would leave her alone, she would do it in her own way, but he drives and drives at her and she is so fragile I am afraid of what is going to happen. Last night she cried for an hour in my arms before she went to sleep. I am very anxious!"

He looked at her small, sad, earnest face, was filled with a quick vision of her comforting and consoling her sister, thought suddenly of the child which, despite his every effort, had been lost to her, and with a grave face answered:

"I can see you are anxious, but it is a difficult matter to interfere in. We must consider it. Your father is not actually cruel to her?"

"No! But he terrifies her. He used to be fond of her but he is so changed now that even his fondness is changed to something strange and terrible."

He had heard, of course, the stories concerning Brodie's altered habits but forbore to question her more deeply on this particular point and, instead, he exclaimed:

"Why is he so eager for her to win the Latta? It's usually a boy that wins that is it not never a girl?"

"That may be the reason," replied Mary sadly; "he's always been mad for some unusual kind of success to bring credit on himself; always wanted Nessie to do well because of his own pride. But now I'm certain he doesn't know what he'll do with her when she's won it. He's shoving her on to no purpose."

"Is young Grierson in the running for the Bursary?" queried Renwick, after a moment's consideration. "Your father and Grierson are not exactly on good terms, I believe."

Mary shook her head.

"It's deeper than that, I'm sure," she answered. "You would think the winning of it was going to make Father the envy of the whole town the way he talks."

He looked at her comprehendingly.

"I know your father, Mary, and I know what you mean. I'm afraid all is not right with him. There was always something Well I've come across him in the past too…", he did not say that it had been chiefly on her behalf, "and we have never agreed. There would be little use in my going to see him if, indeed, it were permissible for me to do so. Any direct action of mine would serve only to aggravate him and make his conduct worse."

As she sat observing him while, with an abstracted gaze, he pondered the question, she thought how wise, how kind and considerate he was towards her, not rushing blindly, but reasoning coherently on her behalf; her eyes moved slowly across his strong dark face, vital yet austere, over his spare, active and slightly stooping form, until they fell at length upon his hands, showing sensitive, strong, and brown against the immaculate white bands of his starched linen cuffs. These firm, delicate hands had probed the mysteries of her inanimate body, had saved her life, such as it was, and as she contrasted them in her mind with her own blotched and swollen fingers, she felt the gulf which separated her from this man whose help she had been bold enough to seek. What exquisite hands! A sudden sense of her own inferiority, of her incongruity amongst the luxury and taste of her present surroundings afflicted her, and she diverted her gaze quickly from him to the ground, as though afraid that he might

intercept and interpret her glance.

"Would you care for me to see the Rector of the Academy about Nessie?" he asked at length. "I know Gibson well and might in confidence ask his assistance in the matter. I had thought at first of speaking to Sir John Latta, but your father is engaged at the office of the shipyard now and it might prejudice him there. We doctors have got to be careful of what we are about. It's a precarious existence," he smiled. "Would you like me to see Gibson, or would you rather send Nessie to me to let me have a look at her?"

"I think if you saw the Rector, it would be splendid. He had great influence with Father once," she replied gratefully. "Nessie is so frightened of Father she would be afraid to come here."

"And were you not afraid to come?" he asked, with a look which seemed to comfort her with its knowledge of her past fortitude.

"Yes," she answered truthfully. "I was afraid you would refuse to see me. I have no one to ask for help for Nessie but you. She is so young. Nothing must happen to her!" She paused, then added in a low tone, "You might not have wished to see me. You know all about me, what I have been!"

"Don't! Don't say that, Mary! All that I know of you is good. I have remembered you for these years because of your goodness, your gentleness and your courage." As he looked at her now he would have added, "and your loveliness," but he refrained and said instead, "In all my life I never met such a sweet, unselfish spirit as yours. It graved itself unforgettably upon my mind. I hate to hear you belittle yourself like that."

She flushed at the warm comfort of his words and replied:

"It's like you to say that, but I don't deserve it. Still, if I can do something for Nessie to make up for my own mistakes, I'll be happy."

"Are you an old woman to talk like that! What age are you?" he cried impetuously. "You're not twenty-two yet. Good Lord! You Ye only a child, with a whole lifetime in front of you. All the pain you've suffered can be wiped out you've had no real happiness yet worth the name. Begin to think of yourself again, Mary. I saw you looking at that picture of mine when I came in. I saw how it took you out of yourself. Make your life a whole gallery of these pictures you must amuse yourself read all the books you can get take up some interest. I might get you a post as companion where you could travel abroad."

She was, in spite of herself, strangely fascinated by his words and, casting her thoughts back, she recollected how she had been thrilled in like fashion by Denis, when he had opened out entrancing avenues for her with his talk of Paris, Rome and of travel through wide, mysterious lands. That had been a long time ago, when he had moved horizons for her with a sweep of his gay, audacious hand and whirled fier abroad on the carpet of his graphic, laughing speech. He read her thoughts with a faculty of intuition which confounded her and said slowly:

"You still think of him, I see."

She looked up in some slight dismay, divining that he misjudged the full tendency of her emotion, which was merely a retrospective sadness, but, feeling that she could not be disloyal to the memory of Denis, she did not speak.

"I would like to do something for you, Mary," he resumed quietly, "something which would make you happy. I have some influence. Will you allow me to find some post which is suited to you and to your worth, before I go away from here?"

She started at his words, bereft suddenly of her warm feeling of comfort, and stammered:

"Are you going away, then?"

"Yes," he replied, "I'm off within six months. I'm taking up a special branch of work in Edinburgh. I have the chance to get on the staff there something bigger than the Cottage Hospital. It's a great opportunity for me."

She saw herself alone, without his strong, resolute support, vainly endeavouring to protect Nessie from her father, interposing her own insignificant resolution between Brodie's drunken unreason and her sister's weakness, and in a flash she comprehended how much she had built on the friendship of this man before her, understood how great was her regard for him.

"It's splendid for you to have got on so well," she whispered. "But it's only what you deserve. I know you'll do as well in Edinburgh as you've done here. I don't need to wish you success."

"I don't know," he replied, "but I shall like it. Edinburgh is the city to live in grey yet beautiful. Take Prince's Street in the autumn with the leaves crackling in the gardens, and the Castle russet against the sky, and the blue smoke drifting across Arthur's Seat, and the breeze tingling, as clean and crisp as fine wine. No one could help but love it." He glowed at the thought of it and

continued, "It's my native place, of course you must forgive my pride. Still, everything is bigger there finer and cleaner, like the air."

She followed his words breathlessly, seeing vividly the picture that he drew for her, but filling it always with his own figure, so that it was not only Prince's Street which she saw but Renwick striding along its grey surface, against the mellow background of the Castle Gardens.

"It sounds beautiful. I have never been there but I can picture it all," she murmured, meaning actually that she could picture him there.

"Let me find something for you to do before I go away," he persisted; "something to take you out of that house."

She could feel that he was anxious for her to accept his offer, but she thrust the enticing prospect away from her, saying:

"I came back of my own choice to look after Nessie! I couldn't leave her now. It's been a terrible life for her for the last few months and if I went away again, anything might happen to her."

He perceived then that she was fixed upon remaining and immediately a profound concern for her future disturbed him, as if he saw her already immolated on the altar of her own unselfishness, a sacrifice, despite his intervention, to the outrageous pride of her father.

What purpose had it served for him to save her, to have helped her to escape from death, were she to drift back once again into the same environment, the same danger in a more deadly form? He was affected even to the point of marvelling at his own emotion, but quickly masking his feelings he exclaimed cheerfully:

"I'll do my best for Nessie! I'll see Gibson to-day or to-morrow. Everything that I can do shall be done. Don't worry too much about her. Take more heed of yourself."

She felt when he said these words that the purport of her visit had been achieved and, diffident of occupying his time longer, she at once arose from her chair and prepared to go. He, too, got up but made no movement to the door, remaining silent, watching her face which, as she stood erect, was touched lightly by an errant beam of the pale March sunshine, so pale in the interior of the room that it gleamed upon her skin like moonlight. Moved as another man had been moved by her in moonlight, he caught his breath at the sight of her beauty, luminous in this light, showing against the foil of her indifferent and inelegant garments, and in his imagination he clothed her in satin of a faint lavender, visioned her under the silver radiance of a soft Southern moon in a garden in Florence or upon a terrace in Naples. As she poised her small foot in its rough shoe courageously towards her departure, he wished strangely to detain her, but found no words to utter.

"Good-bye," he heard her say softly. "Thank you for what you have done for me, now and before."

"Good-bye," he said mechanically, following her into the hall, realising that she was going. He opened the door for her, saw her move down the steps and with the sudden sense of his deprivation he responded to an appeal within him and called out hurriedly, awkwardly, like a schoolboy, "You'll come and see me again soon, won't you?" Then ashamed of his own clumsiness, he came down the steps to her and proffered an explanation of his remark, exclaiming,

"When I've seen Gibson I'll want you to know what the outcome is to be."

Again she looked at him gratefully and, exclaiming, "I'll come next week," gained the road and walked rapidly away.

As he turned and slowly reentered his own house, he became gradually amazed at his own recent action, at his sudden outspoken request that she should revisit him shortly; but although at first he somewhat ashamedly attributed this to the poignant appeal of her beauty in the light that had encircled her in his room, later he more honestly admitted to himself that this was not the sole reason of his conduct. Mary Brodie had always been for him a strangely beautiful figure, a noble, courageous spirit who had woven her life through his existence in the town with a short and tragic thread. From the moment when he had first seen her unconscious, in the sad predicament of her condition and against the gross contamination of her surroundings, like a lily uprooted and thrown on the dung hill, he had been drawn to her in her helplessness and immaturity; later he had been fired by her patience and uncomplaining fortitude during her long period of illness and in the suffering visited upon her by the death of her child; he had seen too, and clearly, that though she had been possessed by another, she was pure, chaste as that light which had recently encompassed her. His admiration and interest had been aroused and he had promised himself that he would assist her to rebuild her life, but she had run from the town the moment her strength had permitted, fluttering away from the net of opprobrium which she must have felt around her. During the years of her absence he had, from time to time, thought of her; often the memory of her figure, thin, white, fragile, had risen before him with a strange insistent appeal, as if to tell him that the thread of her life would return to weave itself once more into the texture of his existence. He sat down at his desk, considering her deeply, praying that there would be no further tragedy in this return of Mary Brodie to the house of tribulation from which she had been so grievously outcast. After a few moments his thoughts moved into another channel, and from a pigeon- hole in his desk he drew out an old letter, the writing of which, now slightly faded after four years' preservation, sloped in rounded character across the single page. He read it once more, this, her only letter to him, in which she had sent him some money, the pathetic accumulation, no doubt, of her meagre wages, in an attempt to recompense him in some degree for his service to her. With the letter clasped in the fine tapering fingers of his hand he remained staring in front of him, seeing her working as she had now told him she worked, upon her knees, scrubbing, washing, scouring, performing the menial duties of her occupation working like a servant.

At length he sighed, shook himself, restored the letter to the desk, and observing that he had a full hour before his afternoon consultations were due to begin, determined to visit the Rector of the Academy at once, to enquire discreetly into the condition of Nessie Brodie. Accordingly, having instructed his housekeeper that he would return before four o'clock, he left the house and walked slowly towards the school, wrapped in a strange and sober meditation.

It was but a short way to the Academy, that old foundation of the Borough which lay within the town, backing a little from Church Street to exhibit the better the severe, yet proportioned architecture of its weathered front, and now, in the paved space that lay before it, displaying proudly the two high-wheeled Russian guns captured at Balaclava by Maurice Latta's company of the Winton Yeomanry.

But Renwick, when he shortly reached the building, passed inside without seeing its frontage or its guns; mounting the shallow, well-worn stone stairs, he advanced along the passage, tapped with a preoccupied manner at the headmaster's door and, as he was bidden, entered.

Gibson, a youngish looking man for his position, whose face was not yet completely set into the scholastic mould, was seated at his littered desk in the middle of the small book-lined study and he did not at once look up, but, an engrossed yet unpedantic figure in his smooth suit of dark brown a colour he habitually affected, continued to observe a document that lay in front of him. Renwick, a faint smile finally twisting his grave face at the other's preoccupation, remarked whimsically, after a moment:

"Still the same earnest student, Gibson," and as the other looked up with a start, continued, "It takes me back again to the old days to see you grinding at it like that."

Gibson, whose eye had brightened at the sight of Renwick, lay back in his chair and, motioning the other to sit down, remarked easily:

"I had no idea it was you, Renwick. I imagined rather one of my inky brigade trembling in the presence, awaiting a just chastisement. It does the little beggars good to keep them in awe of the imperial dignity."

A smile passed between them that was almost as spontaneous as a grin of their schooldays and Renwick murmured:

"You're the very pattern of old Bulldog Morrison. I must tell him when I get back to Edinburgh. He'd appreciate the compliment."

"The humour of it, you mean," cried Gibson, surveying the past with a distant eye. "Gad! How I wish I were going back to the old place like you! You're a lucky dog." Then fixing his glance on the other suddenly, he remarked, "You haven't come to say good-bye, already?"

"No! No, man," returned Renwick lightly. "I'm not off for six months. I'm not leaving you in the wilderness yet awhile." Then his face changed and he contemplated the floor for a moment before raising his gaze to Gibson and resuming seriously, "My errand is a peculiar one; I want you to treat it in confidence! You're an old friend, yet it is hard for me to explain what I'm about." He again paused and continued with some difficulty, "You have a child at

school here that I am interested in even anxious about. It is Nessie Brodie. I'm indirectly concerned about her health and her future. Mind you, Gibson, I haven't the least right to come here like this. I'm well aware of that, but you're not like a board of governors; I want your opinion and, if necessary, your help."

Gibson looked at the other intently, then away again, but he made no enquiry as to Renwick's motive and instead replied slowly:

"Nessie Brodie! She's a clever child. Yes! Very intelligent, but with a curious turn of her mind. Her memory is marvelous, Renwick; you could read her a whole page of Milton and she would repeat it almost word for word; her perception, too, is acute, but her reasoning, the deeper powers of thought, are not proportionate." He shook his head. "She's what I call a smart pupil, quick as a needle, but with, I'm afraid, some pervading shallowness in her intellect."

"She's going up for the Latta," persisted Renwick. "Is she fit for it will she win it ?"

"She may win it," replied Gibson with a shrug of his shoulders, "but to what purpose! And indeed I can't say if she will do so. The matter is not in our hands. The standards of the University are not school standards. Her vocation is teaching after a Normal education."

"Can't you keep her back, then?" remarked Renwick with some slight eagerness. "I have information that her health is suffering from the strain of this preparation."

"It's impossible," returned the other. "As I've just said, the matter is out of our hands. It is a scholarship open to the Borough, set by the University authorities, and every one may enter who is eligible. To be frank, I did drop a hint to her her esteemed parent," he Towned here momentarily, "but it was useless. He's set on it grimly. And indeed she has such an excellent chance of winning that it sounds like pure folly to wish her to stand down. And yet… "

"What?" demanded Renwick.

In reply, the other took the sheet of paper from his desk and, examining it for a moment, handed it to his friend, saying slowly:

"It is a strange coincidence, but I was studying this when you came in. What do you make of it?"

Renwick took the paper, and perceiving that it was a translation of Latin prose Cicero, probably, he imagined written in a smooth yet unformed hand, he began to read the free and ingenuously worded rendering, when suddenly his eye was arrested. Interpolated between two sentences of the interesting and artless interpretation lay the words, written in the doric, and in a cramped and almost

distorted hand, "Stick in, Nessie! What's worth doing is worth doing well. Ye maun win the Latta or I'll know the reason why." Then the easy flow of the translation continued undisturbed. Renwick looked up at the other in astonishment.

"Sent along by her form master this morning," explained Gibson, "from Nessie Brodie's exercise book."

"Was this done at home or in school?" enquired the doctor sharply.

"In school! She must have written these words, unconsciously, of course, but none the less written them with her own hand. What does it mean ? Some reversion to these famous Scottish ancestors we used to hear so much about from the old man? Or is it dual personality? You know more about that sort of thing than I do."

"Dual personality be hanged!" retorted Renwick in some consternation. "This is a pure lapse of mind, a manifestation of nervous overstrain induced, I'm positive from the nature of these words, by some strong force that has been driven into her. Don't you see, man? She became fatigued in the middle of this exercise, her attention wavered and instantly that something beneath the surface of her mind leaped up tormenting her forcing her on, so that, indeed before she resumed coherently, she had unconsciously written this passage," He shook his head. "It reveals only too clearly, I'm afraid, what she fears!"

"We don't work her too hard here," expostulated Gibson; "she's spared in many ways!"

"I know! I know," replied Renwick. "The mischief is being done outside. It's that madman of a father she has got. What are we to do about it? You say you've spoken to him and I'm like a red rag to a bull where he's concerned. It's difficult." Then, as he laid the paper again on Gibson's desk, he added, "This really alarms me. It's a symptom that I've seen before to presage a thundering bad breakdown. I don't like it a bit."

"You surprise me," said the headmaster after a pause, during which he regarded his friend shrewdly. "Are you sure you're not taking an extreme view from from prejudice perhaps?" Then, as the other silently shook his head, he continued tentatively, "Would you like to see the child? only for a moment of course otherwise we'll alarm her."

The doctor considered for a moment, then replied decisively:

"Indeed I would! I would like to see for myself. It's good of you to suggest it."

"I'll fetch her along then," said Gibson, getting to his feet and adding, as he went to the door, "I know you'll not scare her! I want nothing of this slip in her exercise mentioned on any account."

Renwick agreed silently with a motion of his head, and when the other had gone out of the room remained motionless, his brow slightly bent, his eye clouded and fixed upon the writing across the square of paper, as though the strange, incoherent, intruding words had shaped themselves before his gaze into a vision which startled and distressed him. He was aroused by the return of the headmaster, now accompanied by Nessie, whom Renwick had never seen before; and now, as he observed her thin, drooping body, her mild placating eye, her white, fragile neck, the irresolution of her mouth and chin, he was not surprised that she desired to lean clingingly on Mary, nor that Mary on her part should desire to protect her.

"This is one of our prize pupils," said Gibson diplomatically, turning towards Renwick as he resumed his chair. "We show her off to all the visitors. She has the best memory in the upper school. Is that not so, Nessie?" he added, touching her lightly with his gaze.

Nessie flushed proudly, filled in her small spirit by a profound gratification and a deep awe, amongst which mingled, also, some confusion as to the obscure purpose which had compelled her suddenly before the combined majesty of Doctor Renwick and the Rector. She was, however, silent, and remained with lowered eyes, her thin legs shaking a little in her long well-worn boots and coarse woollen stockings not from fear, but from the mere agitation of their imposing presence knowing that the question had been rhetorical. Not for her to speak unless directly addressed!

"You're fond of your work?" enquired Renwick kindly.

"Yes, sir," replied Nessie timidly, raising her eyes to his like a young and startled doe.

"Does it never tire you?" he continued mildly, afraid to shape his question in a more definite form.

She looked at the Rector for permission to speak, and reassured by his look, replied:

"No, sir! Not much! I get a headache sometimes." She announced this fact diffidently as though it might be a presumption on her part to have a headache, but she continued with more assurance, "My father took me to Doctor Lawrie about six months ago and he said it was nothing." She even added naively, "He said I had a good head on me."

Renwick was silent, conscious of Gibson's slightly satiric eye upon him, yet although he felt the weak, evasive answers of this timid child to be as unreliable as the opinion of his pompous colleague, just quoted, his impression of Nessie's strained and over-driven nerves was further strengthened by her bearing.

"I hear you're going up for the Latta," he at length remarked "Would you not like to wait another year?"

"Oh! No, sir! I couldn't do that," she replied quickly. “I must take it this year. My father has said " a shadow fell and deepened upon her brow; she added more reticently, "He would like me to win it and it's a great thing for a girl to win the Latta. It's never been done, but I think I can do it!" She again blushed slightly, not at this sudden exhibition of her own small self-complacency, but at her hardihood in making such a long speech before them.

"Don't work too hard then," replied Renwick finally, turning towards Gibson to indicate that he had concluded his observations.

"That's right then, Nessie," said the headmaster, dismissing her with a cheerful glance. "Run away back to your form now! And remember what Doctor Renwick here has said. The willing horse never needs the spur. Don't overdo the homework."

"Thank you, sir," replied Nessie humbly, as she slipped out of the room, wondering vaguely in her mind what it had all been about; feeling, despite her uncertainty, that it had been a mark of honour for her to be singled out for attention like this, and remembering warmly the encouraging look in his omnipotent eye that she must stand high in the Rector's favour. It would, she considered, as she reentered her classroom with a conscious air, give that impertinent and inquisitive young Grierson something to think about when he knew she had been hobnobbing with the Rector himself.

"I hope I didn't keep her too long," said Renwick, looking at his friend. "It was enough for me to see her."

"You were the epitome of discretion," replied Gibson lightly; "the governors will not throw me out for allowing my discipline to be tampered with." He paused, then added in the same tone, "She gave you a shrewd one about Lawrie."

"Pshaw!" replied Renwick. "To put it bluntly, 'It doesn't do to cry stinking fish', but as one old friend to another, I don't give a snap of the fingers for Lawrie's opinion. He's a pompous ass! That child is not right by a long way."

"Tuts! Renwick," remarked Gibson soothingly. "Don't get a bee in your bonnet. I could see nothing wrong with the girl to-day. She's at a bad age and she's got a beastly old sot of a father but she'll do, she'll do. You're exaggerating. You were always the incorrigible champion of the oppressed, even if it were an ailing white mouse."

"That's what she is," replied Renwick stubbornly. "A little white mouse, and it might go hard with her if she's not watched. I don't like that cowed look in her eye."

"I was more struck by the neglected look of her," replied Gibson. "She's getting to be conspicuous in the school by it. Did you mark the poorness of her dress ? There's been a difference there in the last year or so, I can assure you. Brodie can't have a penny now but his wages, and most of that he spends in liquor. Strictly between ourselves too, I hear it rumoured that he's behind with the interest on his mortgaged house that amazing chateau of nonsense of his. What's going to happen there, I don't know, but the man is rushing towards his ruin."

"Poor Nessie," sighed Renwick; but in his mind it was Mary that he visioned amidst the poverty and degradation of her home. It was impossible to judge from Gibson's expression if some vague glimmering of understanding regarding his friend's motive in the matter had dawned upon him; and indeed it might, for in the past he had heard him speak feelingly of the strange case of Mary Brodie; but now he patted him upon the shoulder and remarked encouragingly:

"Cheer up, you miserable sawbones! It's not going to kill anybody. I'll see to that. I'll keep my eye on Nessie."

"Well," said Renwick at length, "it'll do no good to sit glooming here." He looked at his watch and arose from his chair. "I'm keeping you back and I've got my own work to attend to. It's almost four."

"Rich old ladies queuing up for you, you sly dog!" said Gibson quizzically. "What they see in that ugly face of yours I can't imagine!"

Renwick laughed as he replied:

"It's not beauty they want, or I'd refer them to you." He held out his hand. "You're a good sort, Gibson! I'll miss you more than any one when I leave here."

"I wonder!" said the other as he pressed his friend's hand aflfectionately.

Renwick left the room quickly, but as he went down the shallow, stone steps, worn through the years by an endless succession of careless footsteps, and passed between the two, grey Russian guns, setting his course along the road for his home, his pace insensibly diminished and his thoughts again grew heavy. "Poor Nessie!" He now saw the shrinking figure before him, enveloped by the soft, protecting arms of her sister who, shielding the child's drooping form by

her own soft body, looked at him with brave, enduring eyes. As he passed along the street, the vision grew in intensity, oppressing him, rendering somehow unattractive the stimulating prospect which had lately filled his mind, dulling the glamour of his new work in Edinburgh, blotting out the freshness of Castle Gardens and the romantic fortress piled against the sky, blunting the ever keen savour of the wind as he felt it sweep to him from off the Calton Hill. It was with a sombre face that he entered his own house and set himself to work.

VII

THE mild April day had advanced for one hour beyond its noontide and, filled by the fresh odours and soft, stirring sounds of the budding spring, lay upon the town of Levenford like a benison. But to Brodie, as at his dinner hour he walked along the road towards his home, there was no blessing in the sweet burgeoning around him.

Filled with bitterness, he did not feel the caress of the gentle air or recognise in each new shoot the running sap within the trees; the yellow clumps of nodding daffodils, the white, elusive snowdrops, the glowing, mingled globes of crocuses which ornamented the front gardens of the road were by him unseen; the faint cawing of rooks as they circled around their new-built nests amongst the tall trees at the bend of the road was a jangle on his irritated ears.

Indeed, as he reached these trees and the sound came to him more loudly, he sent a venomous glance at the birds, muttering, "Damn their noise they ring the lugs off a man. I could take a gun to them," when suddenly, as if in answer to his threat, a low-flying crow swept over him and with a derisive "caw-caw" dropped its excrement upon his shoulder. His brow gathered like thunder as he considered that the very birds had turned against him and defiled him; for a moment he looked as though he could have felled each tree, torn apart the nests and destroyed every bird in the rookery; but with a wry twist of his lips he cleansed his coat with his handkerchief and, his mood set more bitterly, continued upon his homeward way.

The better conditions of his living since the return of Mary had made little difference in his appearance, for although she sponged and pressed his clothing, washed and starched his linen, and brushed his boots to a fine polish, he had now abandoned himself utterly at nights to the bottle, with the result that his face had grown more veined, more sallow and sunken, and his neater dress hung upon his gaunt frame with the incongruity of a new suit upon a scarecrow.

He looked, although he knew it not, a broken man, and since he had lost Nancy his disintegration had progressed at a more rapid pace. At first he had told himself fiercely that there were other fish in the sea as good as, and indeed, better than she, that he would quickly fill her place in his affections by another and a finer woman; but gradually, and with a cutting injury to his pride, he had been made to see that he was now too old and unattractive to compel the attention of women and, the lordly days of his overflowing purse being ended, that he had become too poor to buy their favour. He realised, too, after a short and resentful period of self-delusion, that it was his Nancy that he desired, that none other could replace her; she had wrapped herself around his flesh so seductively that in her absence he craved for her only and knew that no one else would do. He drank to forget her, but could not. The whisky soaked his brain, deadened his vivid appreciation of his loss, but still, and even when he was drunk, tormenting pictures floated before his numbed mind, haunting him with visions of Nancy and Matt as they would be together in their new life. As he saw them, they were always together, and, although he cursed himself for the thought, happy, forgetful of him and of his past bearing on their lives; Nancy's laugh, and it was the laugh of an Aphrodite, echoed in his ears, evoked, not by his, but by Matt's caresses, and as with an agonising lucidity he saw his son supplanting him in her affections, his eyes would close, his look become helpless and livid.

At present, however, he was engrossed by another matter, not, let it be said, the offence of the crow, which had merely thrown another coal upon the fire of his resentment, but a greater and more personal affront; and his air was less apathetic than was usual in the public street, his manner more intent as he moved with an unusual rapidity towards his house.

He had a grievance to air and, as Nessie was the only person whom he now addressed with any freedom, and as the affair in some manner concerned her, it was she whom he hastened to see. As he opened the front door and entered his home, his morose reticence was for the moment abandoned and he immediately called out:

"Nessie! Nessie!" He was in the kitchen before she could reply, and sternly regarded the startled eye that looked back at him from her half-turned head as she sat at table, a spoonful of her broth arrested in mid-air, her whole attitude indicative of sudden apprehension.

"Has that young whelp o' Grierson's said anything to you about the Latta?" he shot at her fiercely. She let the spoonful of soup splash back into her plate as, thinking that mercifully his question was not so bad as she had expected, she shook her head nervously, and replied:

"No, Father. At least nothing much."

"Think," he cried. "Think hard. What does nothing much mean?"

"Well, Father," she quavered, "he's always saying something or another that's not nice about about us. He sometimes sneers about me and the Latta."

"Did he ever tell you that you shouldna go in for it?" he demanded. "Answer me!"

"Oh! He would like me not to try for it, Father," she replied, compressing her small lips. "I know that as well as anything. I suppose tie thinks it would give him some small chance of it not that hes got any."

His discoloured teeth came together and he displayed them as his lips parted in a grin of wrath.

"So that's it!" he exclaimed. "I was sure o't. Ay, I was right!” He seated himself at table and, ignoring the steaming bowl which Mary silently placed before him, thrust his face close to Nessie's. "Say that again," he muttered.

"What, Father?"

"About that pup o' Grierson's."

"That he's got no chance of the Latta?" she queried timidly; then seeing that she was pleasing him, she harmonised her mood to his and sniffed indignantly. "No! I should think not. He hasn't a ghost of a chance. Even if I didn't go in for it, there's others have as good a chance as he has. But he'll never get it while I'm about."

"You're the stumblin' block to him."

"Yes, indeed, Father!"

"That's fine! That's fine!" he muttered, looking at her with dilated eyes. "God! it does me good to hear that." He paused. "Do ye know what happened to me as I was coming home to-day, like any other respectable townsman?" His nostrils quivered at the memory and his voice rose as he cried, "Yes, comin' home quietly and decently, when that blasted swine came up to me Provost Grierson our braw

new provost God! What they made a thing like him provost for beats me; he must have sneaked himself into the position it's it's a disgrace to the town. I suppose because he's the provost now, he thinks he can do anything, for he had the damned insolence to accost me in the open daylight and tell me not to put you in for the Latta."

He looked at her as though he expected her to swell visibly with indignation, and feeling that some response was expected of her she replied feebly:

"It was just jealousy, Father, that was all!"

"Did I not tax him with that?" he cried. "I should think I did. I told him you had always beaten his measly pup and that you would do it again and again and again." He repeated the words in an exultant shout. "The damned cheek of the man to try and cadge the thing for his own son by askin' me to keep you back for another year. And when I flung that in his face, he had the impudence to turn round and mealy-mouth me with talk of the dignity of his position, and about him bein' the spokesman of the Borough, saying that he had been told ye werena lit to go up that you were not strong enough that he was speakin' in your interests and not in his. But I had him." He clenched his fist in something of his old manner, as he exclaimed, 4t l had him on all points. I threw Lawrie's own words at his slcckit head. I had the whip hand o' him at every turn!" He laughed exultantly, but after a moment his face darkened and he muttered, "By God! I'll make him pay for it ay, and for the other things he said to me as well. Why I didna level him to the street I canna think! But never mind you and me will make him pay for't in other ways. Will we not, Nessie?" He gazed at her wheedlingly. "You'll knock that brat o' his into a cocked hat will ye not, Nessie? And then well look at the grand, chawed look on his face. You'll do it won't ye, woman?"

"Yes, Father," she replied obediently, "I’ll do it for ye."

"That's fine. That's real fine," he murmured, rubbing his veined hands together in suppressed elation. Then suddenly, at some secret thought, his expression grew black, and again thrusting his face into hers, he exclaimed, "You better do it. By God! You better beat him. If you don't I'll I'll grip that thin neck o' yours, and fair strangle ye. You've got to win that Latta or it'll be the waur o' ye."

“I’ll do it, Father! I'll do it!" she whimpered.

"Yes, you'll do it or I'll know why," he cried wildly. "I tell you there's a conspiracy in this town against me. Every man's hand is turned against me. They hate me for what I am. They're jealous. They know that I'm away and above them that if I had my rights I would wipe my dirty boots on the smug faces o' the lot of them. But never mind," he nodded his head to himself in a wild burst of unreason, "I'll show them yet. I'll put the fear o' me into them! The Latta will be the start o' it. That'll put a spoke in the Lord High Provost's wheel then we'll begin in real earnest."

At this point Mary, who had been standing in the background observing her father's paroxysm and his manner towards Nessie with an expression of acute anxiety, came forward and said coaxingly:

"Will you not take your broth before it gets cold, Father? I took such pains with it. Let Nessie get hers too she must eat up if she's going to study as hard as she does."

His exaltation was suddenly arrested at her words. His expression changed, as though something withdrew from it, retired quickly from open view into the hidden recesses of his mind, and he exclaimed angrily:

"What do you want to interfere for? Can you not leave us alone? When we want your advice well ask for it." He picked up his spoon and sullenly began his soup; then, after a while, as though he had been brooding on her effrontery in speaking, he exclaimed, "Keep your remarks about Nessie to yourself. I'll manage her my own way.”

The meal proceeded for some time in silence, but when they were partaking of the next simple course, Brodie again turned to his younger daughter, and staring at her sideways began, in the ingratiating tone which he invariably adopted for this rote of questions and which, from constant repetition and the manner of his address, now excited her almost to the point of hysteria.

"And how did you get on to-day, Nessie?"

"Quite well, Father!"

"Did anybody praise my own lass to-day? Come on, now, somebody said something about you. It was your French to-day, was it not?"

She answered him mechanically, at random, anyhow only to be rid of the nerve-racking necessity of formulating new and gratifying replies to his fatuous, yet pressing queries, of appeasing his insatiable demand for tangible evidence of her prowess, of the attention which his daughter was attracting at school. At length, when he had satisfied himself, although she on her part hardly knew what she had said, he lay back in his chair and, regarding her with a bland, proprietary eye, remarked:

"Good enough! Good enough for the Brodies! That was high praise for them to give us. You're doin’ not so badly, woman! But ye maun do better. Better and better. Ye've got to make as sure o' that Latta as if it was lying on that plate in front o' ye. Guid sakes! Just think on it. Thirty guineas every year for three years that makes ninety guineas or near enough to a hundred, golden sovereigns. There's a hundred, golden sovereigns lying there on that plate o' yours waiting to be picked up. Ye havena got to scramble for them, or stoop for them; you've just got to gather them up! God! If ye don't put these wee hands o' yours out to lift them, I'll twist the heid off ye!" He looked at the empty plate before her, seeing it piled high with sovereigns, gleaming with the rich lustre of heaped gold, filled with a sum which, in his reduced circumstances, seemed to him enormous. "It's a rich, rich prize," he murmured, "and it's yours! I could see it makes the greedy eyes o' that snipe Grierson drop out o' their sockets to think on it comin' into this house. I'll learn him to affront me in the main street of the town!" He was moved by a short, silent laugh that was like a sneer, then, looking again at Nessie, he lifted his eyebrows and, with a resumption of his absurdly arch manner, said in a tone of high confidence,

"I'll be home early to-night, Nessie! We'll make a bend the minute we've finished our tea. Not a minute will we waste! We'll be on with our lessons before we've swallowed the last bite." He looked at her slyly, as he remarked,

"You can be at it in the parlour, and I'll bide in here to see that not a soul disturbs ye. Quiet! Quiet! That's what ye want, and I'll see that ye have it. Ye'll have the quiet o' the grave!"

He seemed pleased with the force of this comparison and repeated the last words

impressively and sonorously. Then in a harder tone he added; "Ye maun stick to it! Stick in hard. Put your back into it. What ye do, do well. Remember you're a Brodie and set your teeth to win through with it."

His task of exhortation for the moment completed, filled, too, by a consciousness of worthy effort accomplished, he removed his eye from Nessie and allowed it to rest oppressively upon the face of his other daughter, daring her to interfere.

"What are you glowerin' at?" he demanded, after a moment. "Have I not told ye to keep out of the way when me and Nessie are speakin' together? When we want you we'll ask for you. I told you when ye entered this house again that you were to keep your paws off her, so see that you do it. I'm not wantin' her spoiled like her namby-pamby mother spoiled the rest o' ye."

She was about to leave the room, knowing this to be the most effectual manner of curtailing his resentment against her, when suddenly the front doorbell rang loudly and she paused at the unexpectedness of the occurrence. Such traffic as came to the house, chiefly from the tradesmen of the Borough, was to the back door, and for the front bell to ring thus was a rare event, so unusual now that Brodie looked sharply up, and exclaimed to her, after a moment:

"See what it is!"

She went to the door and opened it, revealing to her own gaze a messenger, who stood upon the steps of the porch bearing in his hand a medium-sized parcel, and who now touched his cap, saying interrogatively:

"Miss Mary Brodie?"

She nodded, her eyes fixed in some dismay upon the package which he was now apparently delivering into her hands and which, from the smooth brown paper and neat pink cord which enclosed it, she knew to be no ordinary parcel, no clumsily wrapped groceries from a local store, neither provisions nor anything which she had herself ordered, but a paragon of a parcel that she associated immediately in her mind with others bearing the same exclusive air, which had, at intervals, descended mysteriously upon her during the last month. But these other packages had invariably come in the middle of the forenoon, at a fixed hour when she was always alone in the house and now, with a sudden anxiety besetting her, she demanded of the messenger the strange question:

"Are you not late?"

He moved his feet uncomfortably, confirming the suspicion in her mind as he defended himself.

"I've had a lot of deliveries," he said. "This came from Glasgow. I had to wait on it." He was glad apparently to see her accept the package without rebuking him and clattered off without further speech, leaving her supporting the light weight of the neatly corded box as though it pressed her down into an acute discomfiture. These consignments of delicacies which had regularly arrived for her enigmatically, yet so safely and opportunely and which she had lavished upon Nessie with an unquestioning delight was this another? With a beating heart she slowly closed the door and, her brain moving actively, she slipped into the parlour, secreted the parcel under the sofa, and again reentered the kitchen, hoping uneasily that her father would make no enquiry into the nature of the visitor. But she saw at once that this faint chance was impossible, that he was impatiently awaiting her return, even now lying back in his chair and fixing her with a large and curious eye.

"Who was that at the door?" Then at her silence he demanded, "Come along! What are ye standing so glaikit for? Who was it?"

"It was only a message boy, Father," she replied quietly, essaying to render her voice composed.

"A message boy!" he repeated incredulously. "Coming to the front door of the house! Gad! What have we got to put up with next."

Then, his anger rising at a sudden thought, he exclaimed, "I'm not going to sit down under that sort of insult. Who sent him ? Tell me and I'll go in about it myself. Who was he from?"

"I don't know!" she faltered.

"Ye don't know!"

"No!" she answered and, still using every effort to conciliate him, hastily added, "Never mind, Father it'll not occur again. Don't upset yourself."

He looked at her for a moment with a lowering eye, noting her suppressed air of embarrassment, faint, yet clearly to be perceived against the pervading candour of her expression.

"Show me the messages he brought," he ground out at her at length. "I didna see you bring them in!"

"They're in the parlour," she replied in a low tone, making as though to move into the scullery. "It's only a parcel nothing you would want to see."

"Get me what he brought," he insisted. "Look sharp about it too. I’ve a notion to look at this strange, disappearing parcel."

"Oh! Father!" she cried. "Can you not believe me?"

"Get it!" he roared. "Or I'll know that you're a liar as well as the other thing."

She saw that she must obey and, with a halting step, went out of the room and returned with the package in her hands.

He glared at it, surprised to find that there had, indeed, been a parcel but more astonished now at its unwonted appearance.

"Pink ribbon," he muttered. "Gad, that's rich!" Then changing his voice abruptly, he sneered, "Would ye have me believe they send out our oatmeal with these falderals on it? Open that box at once. I'll see with my own eyes what's inside."

She knew that it was useless to protest further, and, with the fatal calmness of inevitable discovery, she took a knife from the table, cut the string and, after a few seconds, drew from their enwrapping packing of wool a large and luscious bunch of black grapes. He stared at them incredulously as they hung suspended from her hand before his startled eyes. It was an exquisite cluster, hanging in the dull room like an exotic blossom, each fruit large, firm and perfect, and powdered with a bluish bloom as delicate and seductive as the haze upon a distant landfall. They dangled temptingly upon their thick, smooth stalk, fragrant with a rich, sundrenched odour, filled to bursting with their soft, juicy flesh, ready to melt upon the tongue in a subtle mingling of sweet, succulent flavours. Black grapes at this time! An unheard-of, expensive, out-of-season luxury!

"Where did these come from?" he cried in a loud, hectoring voice. "Who sent these?"

"I don't know, Father," she answered truthfully, for indeed no note had ever accompanied these mysterious delicacies and she had only guessed vaguely, yet happily, that the sender had been Renwick.

"You do know, you slut," he roared at her; "or why should you hide them?" As he looked at her in an angry, baffled fashion, the memory rose before him of the deputation of godly, self-righteous women from the church who had called upon his wife during her illness to leave her fruit and jellies, and he cried,

"Is it some o' these blasted, snivelling women from the kirk that have sent them? Are we getting charity from the town? Is that what we're come to? I suppose they're sorry for you with such a poor mouth as you're aye puttin' on. Good God! They'll be sending us tracts and soup next." He seized the bunch of grapes roughly from her hand, contemplating them contemtuously, but, as he did so, he realised something of the cost of the exquisite fruit before him, knew suddenly that no collection of church workers, however godly, could have sent them. A slow sneer spread over his face as he exclaimed,

"No! I think I see what's at the back o' it. We don't know who sent them. It's what they call an anonymous donor. God Almighty! Are ye come back to that again, you trollop back to your presents from your fancy men! Faugh! You sicken me."

He looked at her with a snarl on his face, but she returned his gaze with a calm and steady eye, and it was poor Nessie, fortunately unobserved, who manifested some signs of confusion and distress.

"You're not going to eat them though," he cried roughly. "No! Not a single one. Ye may look at them as greedily as ye like, but you'll not lip them. This is what's going to happen." And, as he uttered the words, he dashed the grapes upon the floor with a pulping sound and in a fury stamped his heavy boots upon them, squelching the rich juice in all directions, crushing them into a dark mass that stained the grey linoleum like blood.

"There!" he shouted, "That's the bitter winepress that I'm treading. This is my bitter path but tread it I will. I only wish the swine that sent them was underneath my feet. I would serve him in like fashion, whoever he may be. There that'll be something for ye to clean up something to keep your mind off the men you jade. A bit of scrubbin' will take the itch out of ye," and as he spoke he scattered the residue upon the floor with short kicks into every corner of the room. Seizing her by the shoulders, he shoved his face into hers and sneered coarsely,

"I understand what you're up to, my bonnie tottie, but don't go too far ye know what happened to ye the last time." As he concluded he flung her from him, sending her reeling against the wall, from where, with a blush of humiliation upon her face, she still looked at him in silence. After a moment he turned to Nessie and, in a completely opposite voice, soft, fond, wheedling, rendered deliberately contrasting to his tone to Mary in order to wound her the more, remarked:

"Come on, hinny pay no attention to what you've seen or to her either. Ye don't even need to speak to her in future if you don't want to. This sort of thing does not concern you, and besides, it's time you and me had our dauner down the road together we'll have you late for the school if we don't hurry up, and that would never do." He took Nessie's hand and with a great demonstration of affection, led her timid form from the room, but not before she had flashed one frightened, guilty glance at Mary as she turned to go out into the hall.

When the front door closed behind them Mary sighed. She pulled herself up from where Brodie had thrown her against the wall, and although she gazed sorrowfully at the dirty, scattered remnants of the fruit which Nessie would now never eat, she felt with some relief, despite her own humiliation, that her sister had not been prejudiced by the recent unfortunate incident. The words which her father had hurled at her shamed her almost beyond endurance, whilst the injustice of his attitude made her bury her teeth into her lip to keep back the hot rush of indignant tears. Although she had no evidence but that of her own intuition, she knew that Doctor Renwick in his kindness had sent her these grapes and indeed the other gifts, and now all the fine feelings of gratitude that she had entertained towards him, all her sacrifice for Nessie's sake, had been degraded,

thrust down into the mud by her father's gross interpretation of them. She had been made to feel again her position in the eyes of the world, reminded miserably of the smirch that lay upon her name, which would cling to her in this town as long as her life endured.

With a faint shiver she bestirred herself and began to clear the table of its dishes and, when she had caried them into the scullery, she set herself slowly to wash and dry them. As she worked she directed her mind deliberately from her own position, considering with some return of comfort that Nessie seemed to be improving slightly in health, that although her long and forced periods of study continued, she was eating better, that her thin cheeks showed some signs of filling out. Nothing was too much for her to endure if she could protect her sister make her well and strong. It was a supreme satisfaction to have been able to procure some better clothing for Nessie from her savings the small stock of money that she had brought home to Levenford and she cheered herself with the

thought of the improved appearance of the child from the neglected state in which she had found her upon her return.

When she had dried and put away the last dish she took a bucket of warm water and a cloth into the kitchen, went down upon her knees, and began to wash the floor. While she was thus engaged she was suddenly confronted by a whimsical vision of Renwick's face could he have observed her in her present occupation and perceived thus the grotesque result of his generosity. She did not, however, smile at her thought, but sighed again, considering that she would be obliged to ask him to discontinue these good-hearted offerings towards Nessie and herself. She had seen him on two occasions since her first visit to his house and on each she had felt more forcibly how compassionate he had been to interest himself so deeply on Nessie's behalf; but somehow, she had begun to shrink from meeting him, to dread the onset of that strange feeling which swept over her whenever she felt his dark, sympathetic eyes upon hers.

The remembrance of her father's recent words now came to her suddenly, and even in her solitude within the room she winced, wondering unhappily what indeed was the nature of her regard for this man who had shown her nothing but kindness and friendship. It was a happy circumstance perhaps that he was soon to leave the town, that the uncertain and troubled state of her mind would soon be ended.

Strange, then, that as she considered this happy circumstance her face should cloud so sadly, that as she finished her washing of the floor and sat down at the table to busy herself on some mending for Nessie her thoughts should refuse to leave him. He had told her to make her life a gallery of pictures, but her gallery contained now but one picture and that was the portrait of his face. The kitchen, once so dirty and untidy - now lay about her clean and spotless; the rest of the house was equally immaculate; her main work was finished for the day; and yet, when she should have taken up a book or engaged herself in some diversion, as he had directed, she could only sit and think of him. It was incredible!

True, her opportunities for relaxation were not unlimited for, although her return had caused no apparent ripple upon the surface of the life of the town, she shunned the public gaze and lately had formed the habit of going out only when the dusk had fallen. Only once had she departed from this custom, when she had made a pilgrimage to Darroch to see the grave that enclosed Denis and her child.

The same train had borne her, the same streets echoed to her sad, returning footsteps, but another name now stretched upon the signboard of the Lomond Vaults and the doctor whom she had consulted on diat last, unhappy visit had answered the call of his destiny and vanished, likewise into some unknown obscurity. No bitter passion of grief had moved her as she stood by the grave that lay on the slope of Darroch Hill, but only a tender melancholy, directed chiefly towards the form of her infant child that lay so near her kneeling body and was yet so inseparably divided from it. How strange, she had thought, that the throbbing body of the child that had lived so vigorously within her womb, should now lie buried in earth, detached from her for ever. Strange, too, that she, the mother, had never seen and now could never see that child. She had been still unconscious in the Cottage Hospital when, from exposure and its too early advent, it had died without her knowing without her seeing it.

A sense of the injustice of the infant's death had oppressed her as she rose to her feet and made her way out of the graveyard, feeling that she deserved her punishment and accepting it, but thinking that her child had surely merited some short happiness of life. As she got into the train at the station upon her homeward journey she had felt that this visit was final she would never return to that grave and as the train steamed out of the station she had, through the cloud of her depression, faintly visioned upon the platform an illusive figure the figure of Denis waving her a brave, encouraging and a last good-bye.

Now, as she sat at her sewing with a downward, pensive gaze, it was not the memory of this good-bye which filled her mind, but the anticipation of another, a less visionary parting, and in the privacy of her own intimate thoughts she admitted to herself at last, abandoning her attempts at self-delusion that it was hard for her to contemplate the departure of Doctor Renwick from the town. She knew well the gulf that separated them, bridged only by his charity, but conscious that her desire did not extend even to the presumption of friendship but merely to a longing for his presence near her, she felt it permissible for her to mourn his going. Levenford would be empty for her then!

She could sew no longer; her eyes refused to see the stitches, the needle to enter the cotton of the garment; she was weeping at the thought of her loss, prompted, alas, by that emotion which presumed not even to friendship. In her agitation she arose, despising herself, wringing her hands at her own miserable weakness, and as though she felt the need of a freer air than that within the room she made her way blindly out into the back garden, where she paced up and down, striving to calm herself. As she walked, filled at last by a returning tranquillity, she suddenly observed that upon the lilac tree, which in her memory had never flowered, there now grew one large and perfect budding blossom. With a quickening interest she advanced and, gently pulling down the bough which bore it, took the green spray within her fingers, touched and caressed it, and perceived to her surprise, from the faint colour that tinged the tips of the unopened buds, that it was white lilac, Delicious white lilac! She had never known that it was a white lilac bush, but now, like some propitious omen for the future, this melancholy tree had burgeoned and soon would wave a white and scented spray to cheer her during the coming spring. Nessie would love it, she thought, as, gently releasing the branch, she turned and in a happier spirit made her way back to the house.

The afternoon wore on, dusk fell, tea time came and passed, Nessie was again inevitably established in the parlour with her books, Brodie seated in the kitchen with his bottle and, the dishes once more washed and her house in order, she decided that she would fulfil her purpose to visit Doctor Renwick and explain, with all the delicacy she possessed, her difficulty in accepting these gifts which he had sent for Nessie. It was permissible for her to go out; her movements, indeed were not restrained in the evening, so long as she did not visibly interfere with the progress of the studies within the parlour, and assuming her hat and coat, she slipped out of the back door by which inferior avenue her father had now ordained that she should always enter and leave the house.

The night was fresh, the air soothing to her cheek, the unseen flowers more fragrant from the dew, and hidden by the darkness she moved down the road at a free and rapid pace. Although she did not immediately question the causes of this lightness of her mood, the throb of the coming springtime was stirring her, moving her as she had been moved by the budding lilac tree, and the nature of

her present journey was filling her unconsciously with happiness.

But as she drew near to Wellhall Road, she seemed to apprehend dimly the reason of her present cheerfulness, and gradually her steps slowed and she became confronted by a sudden thought. What tight had she to inflict herself upon a busy man who had patients waiting at his house, who was doubtless tired from a hard day's work?

Further, if it were indeed he who had sent the grapes, what impertinence on her part to refuse them! She was stabbed by the thought that her mission was a ruse, a subterfuge invented by her evasive mind to enable her to see him and, while her father's abusive words again rose before her like a judgment, she began to feel how unnecessary it was, now that Nessie appeared to be improving, for her to visit Doctor Renwick as she proposed. By some strange association of season, or was it of her sensations, her mind flew back to another springtime, and she realised that when she had known Denis in the past he had followed her, pursued her ardently; but now, and she blushed painfully in the darkness, it was she who actually wished to thrust her unworthy presence upon a man who had no desire to

see her.

By this time she had reached his house and, on the opposite side of die road, she stopped, rather dejectedly, and surveyed it, considering in her mind the tasteful decorations, the exquisite picture which had compelled her rapt attention. No! She would not go in, but merely watch the house for a moment under cover of the darkness and fill it with his presence, just as in the future she would come to this same spot and vision him again in that rich room when he had left the town for good.

As she stood there, she heard the quick crisp chatter of a horse's trot saw two high yellow lights gleam in the obscurity and, before she could move away, the doctor's gig came whirling to his house. Drawing back into the shadow of the wall she observed the pleasant bustle at the door, heard the pawing of the horse, the jingle of its harness, then Renwick's firm voice, which shook her by its nearness, saying to his man:

"I sha'n't be out again to-night, Dick; at least, I hope not! Good night to you!"

"Good night to you, sir. Hope you won't be disturbed," she heard the groom reply, as clambering back into his seat he drove off to the adjoining stable. With eyes that strained through the blackness, she followed Ren wick's dim figure to the porch; then, as the door was suddenly flung open and he was silhouetted against the brilliant light within, she saw him vividly. For a moment he turned and surveyed the darkness, looking directly towards her. Although she knew herself to be invisible to him, she trembled as though he had discovered her and would retrace his steps and demand to know the reason of her prying presence at this hour. But he did not return. After a last look at the night he went into his house, closing the door behind him, leaving the darkness unrelieved.

For a moment she remained still, overcome by her thoughts, then she stirred and began to move back towards her home, drooping a little, stealing quietly through the streets, as though some pervading realisation weighed her with a sense of infamy. She knew that she, Mary Brodie, outcast, the despoiled virgin, the mother of a dead and nameless child, loved again, but was herself unloved.

VIII

SUNDAY afternoon still held for Brodie the indulgence of an afternoon repose, for although he rose late and did not dine until two, custom died hard with him, and the blank hours from three until five found him invariably in his shirt sleeves and upon his back upon the sofa. It was not, however, the parlour sofa, but the couch within the kitchen upon which he rested; the other room was still hallowed to Nessie's studies, which were pursued on this day of rest with an intensity equal to that of week days, and he considered that it was a sacrifice on his part savouring of the heroic to have suggested and carried into effect this transference of his repose to a less dignified settee.

On this Sunday the hot July sun had made him feel drowsy and, having seen his younger daughter begin upon her work, exhorting her the more strongly in the face of the nearness of the great day of examination next week, he now laid himself down with the air of one who must not be disturbed, and allowed the drone of a fly upon the window to lull him into sleep.

It was, as he had just impressed upon Nessie, the last lap of the race, and whilst he snored in the happy consciousness of having done his part towards success by relinquishing the parlour, she addressed herself with a slightly feverish mind, towards her final perusal of the third book of Euclid. Her face was, flushed from the heat inside the parlour, and a buzzing of insects, like that which had sent Brodie so comfortably to sleep, annoyed her and distracted her mind from its intent purpose. She had never been quite sure of her geometry and now, with the examination coming off in a few days' time, her deficiencies in this subject had intimidated her and impelled her to rush once more through the entire third book. She knotted her brow and moved her lips as she again began to cram the eighth proposition into her brain but, despite her concentration, the words upon the page wavered, the diagrams became blurred, and the lines ran into strange fantastic shapes, not unlike the eccentric figures which had lately filled her troubled dreams and tormented her at nights in her sleep. The axis of the angle to the vertical was the coefficient of no, no, what was she talking about that was perfect nonsense! She must stick into it better than that, or the Latta would slip out of this pocket of hers where it so safely reposed and run away like a white mouse that would quickly nibble up all these golden sovereigns like so much cheese. How hot it was! And how her head ached! Her English was excellent, Latin perfect, French quite good, algebra splendid yes, she was a clever girl, everybody said so, and indeed the examiners for the Bursary would realise it the moment they set eyes upon her. When she had made her way proudly and confidently to school on the day of an examination she had, in the consciousness of her eminence, always felt that people whispered to one another, saying, "That's Nessie Brodie! She's the cleverest scholar in the Academy; shell come out first in this test as sure as her name's Brodie." Perhaps the professors at the University would put their heads together and talk like that; at least they would do so after they had read her papers. They must do so! or her father would want to know the reason of it. Indeed, if they failed to recognise who she was and to give her the first place, he would knock their heads together for them like so many coconuts. Coconuts! Matt had promised to bring her some when he had left for India and she had wanted a monkey and a parrot too, but he had somehow forgotten about them, and now that he had gone off with that terrible woman, he would never remember about a wee thing like Nessie Brodie. Had he married Nancy? She did not know; but Nancy was wicked, even if Matt had put a ring on her finger; and not like Mary, who was good and kind to her. Yet Mary was not married, although she had somehow had a baby which was dead and never mentioned by any one. Mary never spoke of it, but had a sadness about her face as though there was something on her mind that she could never forget. Mary was always running after her, giving her soup and eggs and milk, cuddling her and telling her not to work so hard.

Mary wanted her to win the Latta, but in a reasonable way, and simply to prevent her from being hurt by their father. Her dear sister would cry if she did not win it and yet she need not cry. If she failed it would be a wonderful idea never to tell Mary, to let the years run on and never say a single word about it. What was she thinking of? There must be no failing! If she was not sitting high up in that first place "at the top of the class" as her father had always called it, she herself would have to take the consequences. "I'll wring that thin neck of yours if you let anybody beat ye and after the way I've coached ye on for't" That was what he was always dinning into her ears between his spells of petting and wheedling. He had big hands!

The axis of the angle to the vertical really it was the height of absurdity that she should be doing this on such a hot day, and on the Sabbath day too, when she might have been at the Bible Class with the white frock and the pink sash that Mamma had made for her. But that was worn out or grown out of now; she was getting a big girl. Yet Mamma had always liked her to go to Sunday school with kid gloves and her face washed after dinner. "Lad and lass, kiss and cas', Nessie's in the Bible Class." She was not in it now though, but working hard, ever so hard at her lessons "Yes Father, I'm stickin' in hard. What I'm doin', I'm doin' weel." Mamma had liked her to please Father, but Mamma was dead. She had no mother and Mary had no baby! Mamma and Mary's baby were together sitting on a cloud, waving to her, and singing, "Nessie Brodie's going to win the Latta." She wanted to join in the chorus with all her might, but something tightened her throat and restrained her. Lately she had not been so sure of herself. No! It was a big thing for a girl, and a Brodie at that, to win the Latta. A big thing rand a difficult thing! She had been sure of it at first, so much so that at one time the heap of golden guineas had lain piled upon her plate for every one to see and admire. But now a dreadful, secret doubt was creeping into her mind as to whether she could do it. No one knew about it that was a comfort and no one would ever know.

"Yes, Father, I'm getting on splendid couldn't be better. That Grierson hasn't got a chance. I'm the stumbling block. The Latta's mine already." He was pleased at that, rubbing his hands together and smiling at her approvingly and it was fine for her to feel that she was pleasing him! She would hide everything so cleverly and carefully that he would never see that she was not sure of herself.

She had her own ways of doing things, the clever girl that she was! She was inside her own mind now, creeping about the passages of her brain, admiring, congratulating herself, seeing her very thoughts flow with a marvellous rippling fluency, watching them delightedly as they flashed past her like brilliant, rushing waves of scintillating light.

At last she started suddenly, her eyes lost their vacancy, her face its smooth, unruffled placidity and, as she rubbed her brows with her hand and looked at the clock, she murmured, confusedly, "Good sakes! What have I been thinking about ? Have I been asleep or what? There's an hour gone and I can't mind a thing about it!" She shook her head with annoyance at her own weakness, at the loss of this

precious hour, and was once more about to apply herself to the Book of Euclid when the door opened quietly and her sister came into the room.

"Here's a glass of milk for you, dear," whispered Mary, tiptoeing up to the table. "Father's asleep now, so I thought I might bring you this. It's cold as can be. I've had the jug in running water for an hour."

Nessie took the glass from her sister and began to sip it in an absent fashion.

"It's cool as cool," she replied, after a moment. "It's as good as ice cream on a day like this. Did you ever feel it so close?"

Mary pressed her palm lightly against her sister's cheek.

"You're hot!" she murmured. "Will you not take a half an hour off and come out in the air with me?"

"And what would happen to me if he woke up and found I had gone out?" queried Nessie, with a sharp look. "You know you would get it worse than me, too! No! I'll stay where I am. This milk is cooling me fine. Besides, I've got all this book to get through before Friday."

"How is the headache now?" said Mary after a pause, during which she contemplated the other with some anxiety.

"Just the same! It doesn't feel like a headache now. It's more a numbness."

"Would you like me to put on some more cold water and vinegar cloths for you?"

"Never mind, Mary! I don't think they do much good. I'll be better after next Saturday when I've got the exam. over. That's the only thing that'll cure it."

"Is there nothing you can think of that you'd like?"

"No! There's nothing I fancy at all. It's real kind of you though, Mary. You've been wonderful to me and you've had to put up with so much yourself. But I could never have done without you."

"I've done nothing," replied Mary sadly. "I would like to have done much more. I wish I could have stopped you from going up for the Bursary, but it was impossible! I didn't want you to take it."

"Don't say that!" cried Nessie quickly. "You know I must go up for it. I've thought of nothing else for the last six months and if I had to draw back now it would fair break my heart. I must take it."

"Do you really want to go on with it?" asked Mary doubtfully.

"Just think how I've worked," replied Nessie with some emotion. "Just think how I've been made to work. Am I going to let all that go for nothing? I should hope not. I'm so set on it myself now that I couldn't hold back if I was to try. I feel it now like something that's gripping me and drawing me on."

Mary gazed at the nervous eagerness in her sister's eyes, and, in an attempt to soothe the other, murmured consolingly:

"It'll not be long till it's over now, anyway, Nessie! Don't fret yourself too much about it. Let the work go easy for a day or two."

"How can you talk like that," exclaimed Nessie petulantly. "You know I've got all this ground to get over and it's most important too. This third book is not right into my head yet. I must get it in. I've I've got to drive it in like a nail so that it will stay in and never come out. I might get a question on this very thing that you're felling me to leave alone."

"Hush, Nessie dear! Don't excite yourself," pleaded Mary.

"It's enough to make anybody excited," cried the other wildly. "Here am I working the brains out of myself and you would think that all I had to do was to walk up to that university and ask for the Latta and come home with it in my hand like a stick of toffee. It's not like that at all, I tell you."

"Wheesht, Nessie! Be calm, pettie," soothed Mary. "Don't upset yourself; I didn't mean anything like that."

"You did so!" returned Nessie agitatedly. "Everybody thinks the same thing. They think it's that easy for me because I'm so clever. They don't know the work and the toil that I've been forced to put in. It's been enough to drive me out of my mind."

"I know though, dear," replied Mary softly, stroking the other's brow. "I know all about it and how you've been kept at it! Don't worry yourself though. You're getting tired and anxious. You used to be ever so confident about it. Never mind if you don't win the miserable Bursary. What does it matter!"

Nessie, however, was so strung up that no attitude her sister could have adopted would have pleased her and now she burst into tears.

"What does it matter," she sobbed hysterically. "That's a good one, that is, for me that's set my very heart on winning it. And to call the good hundred sovereigns that I'll get 'miserable' is enough to discourage anybody. Don't you know what Father'll do to me if I don't win it? He'll kill me."

"He'll not do that, Nessie," replied Mary steadily. "I'm here now and I'll protect you from any fear of that. I'll be there when you get the result and if he tries to lay a finger on you it'll be the worse for him."