of kind wishes and messages: it was about as comforting an epistle as could have been composed in these peculiar circumstances.

For many and many a day thereafter that happy evening lingered in Alison's memory, though she hardly knew how she got through the garden, and across the road, and down the shingle to the boat that was awaiting her. All the air seemed full of music; this was like a love-letter that had been sent her; all kinds of wistful fancies that had once been discarded were summoned back now; and she wished to say just two words to Ludovick, and to look into his eyes.

"You seem to have had good news, Alison," said Flora to her, when she had got seated at the tiller, and the two cousins were leisurely pulling out into the loch.

"Yes," she answered, with her checks grown rosy-red, “I—I have had a very kind letter-from Agnes."

"Oh, from Agnes ?" Flora repeated, with a glance of surprise; but she said nothing further; and presently brother and sister had settled into their long steady stroke, which seemed to afford them sufficient interest and occupation.

As for Alison, she did not care to break the gracious silence that was all around them; her heart was murmuring to her of its own happiness as they pulled along. She did not think of asking herself whether there was not something suspicious in the fact of Agnes having so completely ignored all her references to Captain Ludovick being a Catholic, and the possible trouble arising therefrom; she did not reflect that her sister might, out of an extreme delicacy and kindness, have refused, at such a time, to say anything that would dim her tender hopes. No; she only thought that she would like to show this letter to Ludovick. Did it not confirm all his prognostications? Was it not a fair beginning? Her heart within her said yes again and again, with an exceeding comfort and joy.

Moreover, she had plenty of time to weave these fond fancies; for the two cousins, as they worked away at the oars, were humming together snatches of Gaelic airs that did not interfere with her. It was a beautiful evening, now that the sun had sunk behind the western hills: just above the lofty peaks the sky was of the clearest gold, fading into a pale translucent purple overhead; while the waters of the loch around them were all of a trembling and lapping lilac - gray, with the universal, sudden, bewildering

ripples grown almost black. As the time went by, the twilight became more wan and ghostly; and yet the objects along the opposite shore, under the darkening hills and the pine-woods, could be made out with a strange, a livid, distinctness. Then the first lights began to appear-a quivering orange ray here and there that told of a distant window or perhaps of an anchored yacht making all snug for the night. When they finally got ashore, and made their way up to the house through the garden, the slumbering air was sweet with the scents of the flowers, and there were bats flitting about the eaves, suddenly swooping between them and the pale, clear sky. On the threshold she paused and looked back. It was an evening long to be remembered—an evening of visions and dreams.

CHAPTER XVI.

A BOLT FROM THE BLUE.

BUT, as it happened, the very next day brought another communication from Kirk o' Shields that was destined to lead the way to a sudden and unexpected crisis. A little accident helped. When Aunt Gilchrist took the as yet unopened envelope with her into the parlor, where the rest of the family were seated at the table for afternoon tea-the Doctor having also dropped in by chance and just as she was about to sit down, she struck her foot sharply against the leg of the chair. For a second she bit her lip in silence, and it was clear she was suffering considerable pain; then she muttered to herself,

"Dang this confounded thing!"

"Your language, Jane," said the Doctor, quite good-naturedly, "might be a little more gentle."

"Oh, my language!" she said, opening forth in wrath. "My language, indeed! You can talk fine enough about your oxides, and sulphates, and trash o' that kind, to bamboozle a lot of fools! -but much good your long-winded names have ever done to me! Here, Alison, run away and get me a cloth slipper-this infernal fire is like to burn my toe off, now it's begun again!"

Alison went quickly away, and returned with a pair of cloth

slippers, and forthwith the hurt foot was in a measure relieved. But when Alison was for unbuttoning the other boot, her aunt said no-the one was enough.

"Why, aunt," she protested, "do you mean to say you can sit in comfort with a boot on one foot and a shoe on the other?" "Oh, listen, mother," Flora cried. "Isn't that like Alison? Isn't she prim and precise! She's bound to grow up an old maid!"

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'More likely," Master Hugh put in, "she'll grow up to be like the old lady who declared she couldn't go in proper style to have her photograph taken until she had put some cau-de-cologne on her handkerchief "-though it is to be imagined that that apocryphal old lady was an invention of the moment.

But meanwhile Aunt Gilchrist had taken her seat, looking very gloomy, for she was vexed that Periphery should have been so easily aroused again. And perhaps she was all the more taciturn that the young Munroes chose to make themselves surreptitiously merry over her accident, and that they were openly aided and abetted by the Doctor, while Mrs. Munro looked on and listened in mild amusement. Aunt Gilchrist would have nothing to say to that ribald crew. Nay, to escape from them and their covert jeers, she betook herself to her letter, which otherwise might have lain unopened on the table.

And presently it was perceived that the contents thereof were exciting her in no common degree. Indeed, her astonishment and resentment caused her to break forth into brief muttered exclamations- exclamations that showed clearly enough what was passing in her mind.

"Well, I declare!" she cried, with withering contempt. "Bless my soul and body, the woman's mad!-stark, staring mad!... But I'll teach her! To talk to me like this! . . . Well, I never did hear the like!"

"What's your news, Jane?" the Doctor asked.

"It's somebody that wants a lesson taught them," said she, looking up fiercely. "And, my word, they'll get it!"

"If it's anything serious," said he, amiably enough, "I wouldn't advise you to answer it in your present state of mind." "My present state of mind!" she retorted, with scorn.

"What

do you know about my present state of mind! I suppose you would like to doctor that too!-brown messes and white

messes

once every three hours

- to be well shaken

is that the thing this time? Man, man—Duncan, I wonder ye do not take all your phosphates and hydrates and stuff down to the sea some dark night and tumble them in when there's nobody looking!"

"I might as well, if I had many patients like you, Jane," her brother said, with great good-humor; and presently, this frugal meal being ended, he was the first to rise, as his professional duties called him away again.

But Aunt Gilchrist took Alison with her to her own room. 'There, read that!" said the incensed little dame.

"Read that, Alison, and tell me if there's another such impudent woman in the whole wide world!"

Alison took the letter which she at once perceived to be from Mrs. Cowan of Corbieslaw-and carefully and deliberately read it through; but as she had no nerves on fire to worry her, she did not find in it anything calculated to arouse so fierce a storm of indignation. She was very much embarrassed, it is true; for it was all about herself and her prospects; but in so far as the tone of this communication towards Aunt Gilchrist was concerned, it was almost servile-indeed it may have been the specious plausibility of the whole epistle that had irritated the recipient of it.

"Well, aunt," said Alison, "I don't see anything in that to anger you."

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Nothing to anger me!" she exclaimed. "What right has

that woman to interfere with me? What business has she to write to me at all? So you're 'devoted to the service of the Lord,' are you,' and the interests of His church? Indeed, now! But does she think I cannot tell what that means? Ay, but I can, though I was not born yesterday, Alison, my dear; not a bit of it! The service of the Lord is that I'm to provide that stickit minister with a house and a wife at the same time, and support the whole concern. Oh, that's a fine way of providing for him; better than waiting and waiting for a pulpit. A pulpit, my word! To stick up à crayture like that in a pulpit: I'll tell ye what he's better fit for-I'd stick him up in a corn-field, to frighten the crows away! And then 'the distractions and temptations surrounding young people,'" Aunt Gilchrist continued, turning to the letter again. "Tell me now, Alison: do ye think

this woman has a suspicion that there's something between you and Captain Macdonell ?"

Alison flushed a rose-red, but she answered frankly enough,

"I don't know, aunt. It is quite possible. I wrote to Agnes. the other day about-about Ludovick; and she may by chance. have dropped some hint. Or perhaps it's this-Mr. James Cowan met me walking with-with Captain Macdonell in Kirk o' Shields one day, and he may have spoken to her about the stranger-and -and perhaps that's it."

"So I'm to be her cat's-paw, am I?" Aunt Gilchrist resumed, still indignant with this hapless letter. "I'm to see that the

stickit minister is provided for? And it's all for the service of the Lord, of course, and the interests of the church! My certes, I'll send her an answer she little expects: I'll teach her to dictate to me, with her cringing, fawning, sneaking pretences !"

Then she turned to Alison herself.

"Now, Alison," said she, in a much gentler way, "I'm not blinder than other people; and I've seen the way that you and your Captain Ludovick, as they call him, are aye together. I'm not going to ask ye questions, for young folk will have their secrets-it's part of the play, I suppose; but this I will say to you—this I'm bound to say to you—that ye need not be afraid to speak to me about him. No, I give ye my word: I've seen enough of him, and I will say this, that a finer, franker, betternatured young man never stepped in shoes. I was not quite so certain about him at one time; and I took the leeberty of giving him a hint or two-for I'm an old woman, Alison, and ye're a young one; but I do honestly believe this now-I do honestly believe he would take ye this minute if ye had not a penny."

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"Aunt," said Alison-but there were tears of gratitude trembling on her lashes, and her voice was not very firm there would have been no concealment-and least of all from you—but it all seemed so hopeless. It was broken off because I—because I told him they would never agree to it. He is a Catholic."

"Yes, that's true, he is a Catholic-I had forgotten that. But who's they? That woman Cowan ?" said Aunt Gilchrist, beginning to sniff and fume again at the mere mention of her enemy. "What have they got to do with you? Who asked their permission? If you want to marry the young man, what business is