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Luke spoke so earnestly that Margie was touched, and felt a little remorseful for the flat denial which she had given his words.

"Of course I'll do as you like, father," she said, with downcast eyes; "but all the same I think you have been deceived. And it seems wicked to poison people's minds like that. I can't think who could be so base."

"I am afraid my authority is a good one," said Luke. "It was Miss Fairbairn herself; and although she has queer notions, she could hardly have repeated the very words the young man said, if he had never used them in speaking to her."

"What was it he said, then?" said Margie, in a hard voice, quite unlike her usual tones.

"It was something of this kind: that no idea of marrying you had ever entered into his mind, and that if he talked to you it was only as he might to any other girl," said Luke, knitting his brows in the endeavour to recall the precise words Miss Fairbairn had used.

"Did he say that?" said Margie in a low tone. A pang shot through her at the bare idea that Cornelius might have spoken the faithless words, and in her loyalty to him she tried to put away the thought. "I think it must be Miss Fairbairn who put her own feelings into his mouth," she added. Luke paid no heed to her remark. He was in a

melancholy mood, perhaps in a more tender one than usual, and his heart warmed towards his child as he looked at her flushed and tear-stained face.

"You're a good girl, Margie," he said, stroking her golden-brown locks kindly, "and I'm the last man in the world who'd be hard on you. Listen to me, child, and you shall hear an old story which will show you what good reason I have to put little trust in your Cornelius."

Margie dropped on one knee at her father's side, and resting her head on her arm looked up in his face, while he continued

"You have heard folks talk of your aunt Rachel. I don't know that I have ever mentioned her myself, for the thought is a bitter one to me, even at this distance of time."

He paused a moment and fixed his eyes on Margie's eager face. "Yes, you remind me of her sometimes, only she had darker eyes and hair more like Essie's, and people thought her very pretty. She was my only sister, and you know we had been left orphans young and so had become a great deal to each other. We were very happy living together down at Gloucester; she was as bright a companion as you could have, and I was doing well in my trade.

"But one day a fellow called Robin Campbell, a good-looking pleasant-spoken chap enough, and

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uncommon free with his money. He said he had land out in the West somewhere, and talked very big of the great man he was out there, but somehow I mistrusted him from the first. Poor girl! I used to laugh at him to her face, and never knew all the while how her heart had become set upon him, till one day she told me she was going to marry him. Then I was angry, terribly angry with both of them, and I told her plainly that if she married him I would never see her again. Three days afterwards, I came home from work— it was later than usual, on a summer evening I remember-and-I found the house was empty. She was gone, and not a thing could I hear of her till the next week brought a letter from her to say they were married and were to sail for New York in a fortnight."

"Oh, father, what did you do?" asked Margie, who had listened with breathless interest to every word which fell from Luke's lips.

"Do?" said Luke sadly. "I did nothing. Poor Rachel! she gave me her address at Bristol, and begged me to come and see her before she sailed; but I was young then and they had used me ill, and I couldn't get over the wrong she had done me, so I neither wrote nor went, After that the only news I ever had of her was from a Bristol sailor, who had met her in New York ten years

afterwards. Campbell was, as I had taken him to be, a rogue and a villain. Poor Rachel had had a hard time of it, and was in a bad way when this man saw her, and the doctors didn't give her many weeks to live. Then I wrote letter after letter, but no answer came, and one day my own letters were returned to me with an intimation that no such person was known there. After that I had no doubt she was dead."

"Oh, father, dear father," said Margie, with tears streaming down her cheeks, "how dreadfully sad! Poor Aunt Rachel! how much I should have liked to have known her! But perhaps she may yet be alive, and you will see her again some day."

"Not in this world," said Luke, brushing away a tear with the back of his hand. "You must recollect that all this happened some thirty years ago. But you see, Margie, I would not have you think me hard upon you, whatever I may have been to her."

Margie's only reply was to throw both her arms round her father's neck, and at that hour father and child were drawn more closely together than they had ever been before.

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CHAPTER XVIII.

"Do you think because you fail me,
And draw back your hand to-day,
That from out the heart I gave you,
My strong love can fail to-day?"

A. PROCTER.

OWN in the Lady-ground hay-making had begun, and all hands were at work from the early morning till late at evening.

When the night dews still lay thick on the grass, the sound of the mowers sharpening their scythes was heard mingling with the cry of the cuckoo and corn-crake, and all day long the meadow was alive with busy groups of men and women moving in rows as they turned the hay on their forks, or resting in the shade of the ash trees where the waggons stood, and boys came and went from the Manor-house with beer-cans in their hands.

Strange to say, Margie Chaplin was not there,

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