said, gently; and then she looked up again-trustful and confident. "But I knew you would come for me, Ludovick!"

"Yes, I've had a long search for you, Alison; but now I've found you I don't mean to lose sight of you any more. You must come away at once. I suppose Mrs. Cowan is not in the house?"

"She went out only a few minutes. ago, but she may be back again directly," Alison said, with some apprehension appearing on her face. "Shall I go and get my things ready, Ludovick? I-I would rather be away before she came back."

"Oh, as for that," said he, "it is of no consequence to me if there were fifteen dozen of Mrs. Cowans in the house: you are coming away with me, and that is all about it. But we may as well get you away quietly if we can. I see Hugh has disappeared: he is off to get a cab, I know, and he will be back presently. And here is Johnny; you go and get your portmanteau ready, Alison, and Johnny will be waiting to carry it down to the fly."

She hurried away at once; and then Ludovick called to Johnny, who came up the steps grinning with satisfaction, for now he knew the gun was secured, likewise the cartridges, and the stalking of hoodie-crows.

"Look here, Johnny," said he, "you go along and stand at the foot of that stair. There will be a portmanteau for you to fetch down from the room above, and you will have to carry it out to the cab when it comes. Mind you don't let any one interfere with you."

"Cosh, will there be a fight?" exclaimed Johnny, with eager and delighted eyes.

"Of course not. Only, don't let any one stop you. Drive you right through and get the portmanteau out and into the cab." Presently an open fly was driven up, and here was Hugh, very anxious and excited.

"Isn't she ready? Isn't she ready?" he said, breathlessly.

"There's no such great hurry," Macdonell said, quite calmly. "Even if my amiable friend Mrs. Cowan turns up, what can she do?"

"You don't know what she mayn't do. She has the tremendous advantage of being a woman. If there's any kind of a difficulty, you can't knock her out of the way as you might a man. However, if Alison would only look sharp, it will be all right. What a lucky chance it is!"

Indeed, all was going well; for now they heard Alison calling Johnny to come and get down the portmanteau. Moreover, a domestic who had been summoned from some back region by this unusual commotion, having stood and gazed at these strangers for a second or two, quietly retired again: she evidently, thought it was none of her business. But alas! as ill fate would have it, just as it seemed probable they were going to get easily and freely away, Mrs. Cowan appeared upon the scene; and she had not even entered the house when she seemed to divine what was going on.

'Hoity, toity, what's this now?" she exclaimed, with eyes sparkling with anger; and she confronted Ludovick and Hugh in the lobby. All her cringing and servile suavity was gone now; she saw the position clearly enough; she knew that if once the girl was allowed to leave the house, then farewell to all the fond mother's hopes about the poor probationer and his prospects; this was her last chance, and she was prepared to do battle for it. "Here's impudence!" she cried. "I'd just like to know what ye're doing in a respectable woman's house! Well, I declare!" "I have come to take away my wife," Ludovick said, politely enough, “if that is what you want to know."

"Oh, it's you, then," she said, with rather panting expressionfor the crisis had found her unprepared with sufficiently cutting phrases "it's you, then, that led astray that poor girl, and would have made a Roman of her, and a Jezebel, and—and—worse. But you've not done it yet; and you'll no do it; for we've the law on our side; and not a foot will she stir out o' this house, or my name's no Cowan."

"I'm sure I don't know what your name is," Macdonell said, "and I don't care very much; but my wife is going away with me-now-this minute."

66

She's not!-she's not!" the woman cried, fiercely-for the sight of Johnny bringing the portmanteau down-stairs seemed to drive her frantic. "I'll have the law; I'll bring a policeman; you're stealing these things-you're stealing them! She's under my charge; I'll no have her carried off by a gang o' Roman Catholics and thieves!"

At this moment Alison appeared, and Mrs. Cowan instantly turned to face her-barring her way, indeed. "I dare ye to leave this house!" she cried.

"Ye're the daugh

ter of an honest, God-fearing man, and I dare ye to go forth and bring shame on him and his house and his congregation!"

"Let me pass, Mrs. Cowan," said Alison, who was very pale. "I will not-I will not!" this infuriated person cried. "Ye're under my charge; out o' this house ye'll not budge one step. I'll take ye back to your room myself—"

"If you lay a hand on her," Ludovick said—and his eyes were beginning to flash fire now-"it will be the worst day for you you ever encountered in your life!"

But she was not to be intimidated.

"Back to your room, miss!" she said, and she seized the girl by the wrist.

Well, here an extraordinary thing occurred. Johnny, by some mischance, happened at this very moment to trip over the portmanteau, which was lying in the lobby, and he fell forward against Mrs. Cowan-fell forward, indeed, with such violence and weight that she was sent staggering against the parlor door, which yielded, so that she stumbled backward into the room, while the heavyshouldered lad, carried on by the impetus of his fall, rolled in after her. Instantly there was a frightful shrieking and scrimmage; but Hugh clapped to the door, and held the handle.

"Quick now, Ludovick! whip up the portmanteau, and be off with you! Get into the cab, Alison! Leave Johnny and me to come along afterwards: look sharp-or she'll have him killed!”

Ludovick with his powerful arms seized the portmanteau, carried it down the steps and across the pavement, and swung it up to the driver; he opened the door and helped Alison into the fly; then they drove away, and Hugh waited until they were well out of sight. Just as they disappeared round a distant corner, Ludovick looked back and waved his hand: he was laughing-doubtless over Johnny's achievement; but Alison, Hugh could perceive, still seemed frightened and was very pale. Then he thought it was time for him to open the parlor door, and see what was going on within.

But the battle raged no longer. The combatants were exhausted. Mrs. Cowan had thrown herself on the sofa, her face downward on the cushion, and she was sobbing hysterically; while her dress was in dire disarray. Johnny, on the other hand, stood erect, irate, and vengeful, regarding his enemy with lowering eyes; but he too was in woful plight—his collar hanging from

his neck, his waistcoat torn open, and blood streaming profusely from two terrible scratches that extended from his right temple all down the side of his face.

"Come away, Johnny-come away!" his master said to him. But Johnny lingered.

"I wass giffing that tammed

something she will remember," he said, between his teeth, as he still regarded his prostrate foe. "Does she want any more?"

There was no response from the sobbing and dishevelled figure on the sofa.

"Come away, John, I tell you!"

But even when he had in a fashion dragged him out of the house, Hugh could not induce Johnny to go any farther..

"That tammed · " he said, sullenly, as he was mopping his face with his handkerchief, "she had her nails in my neck. I'm not going back to Edinburgh just yet, Mr. Hugh, I know the weh there ferry well. I'm going to stay here until it is dark; and when it is dark I will go back. She's an ahfu' woman, that; but, by Cosh, I wass giffing her something!"

"What on earth do you want to stay here till it is dark for?" Hugh demanded, with some impatience.

"I want to bash the windows with stons," said Johnny, gloomily regarding the house.

"Yes, and get locked up in the police-office!"

"That is no matter," was all that John said.

Eventually, however, he was forced to come away with Hugh: and when they caught a tram-way car, and got on the top of the same, Hugh set to work magnanimously to convince John that he had not fared worst in that fell duel.

"But just remember this, Johnny," Hugh Munro said to this. extremely disreputable-looking lad, whose torn collar could not be made to come together again. "Consider what you've done. You've broken into a house, and carried off a portmanteau, and let a minister's daughter run away, and committed assault and battery, and I don't know what else. You'll be very well out of it if you get safely back to Lochaber. What would you say now if you were taken before a judge in Edinburgh—a terrible person in a big white wig and silk robes-and if you were charged before him, what would you say?"

"Well," said Johnny, with the most imperturbable coolness,

"I would tell him I wass giffing that tammed

as much as

she wass giffing me; and if he did not like the answer, I would tell him to do what wass his pleasure. For you know what they say in the Gaelic, Mr. Hugh-Is coma leis an righ Dughall, is coma le Dughall co dhùibh.'"*

CHAPTER XXIII.

AGNES.

WHAT strangely unexpected strands appear in this web of life we weave from day to day. When Alison Macdonell was walking through the luxuriant gardens of Monaco, between branching palm and towering cactus, and looking down the steep cliffs to the intense opaque blue of the Mediterranean Sea basking in the noonday sun, her thoughts would go wandering away back to the grimy little Scotch town, with its rain, its squalid streets and smoke-laden skies; when she stood in the mysterious dusk of Milan Cathedral, and beheld the enthroned cardinals in their robes of purple and red, and listened to the distant sound of trumpet. and viol and bassoon leading the hushed invisible choir, she would think (and with no kind of disrespect or contempt) of the bare walls and cold pews of East Street Church, and of the harsh voices of men singing, "Be merciful to me, O God" to the melancholy strains of "Coleshill" or "Bangor;" and even with her young husband by her side, laughing, talking, proud of her, assiduous in his devotion to her, and studying her every wish with a constant kindness, her heart would turn with a sort of piteous longing for reconciliation to the stern old man who had shut the door of his house upon her forever. Ludovick did not seek to argue her out of these wistful regrets, though sometimes he goodnaturedly remonstrated.

"Look here, Ailie," he would say, but very gently, "each person has to go his or her own way in the world; and I think, after you have got back to Lochaber, and are settled down there, and have got acquainted with the many families who will be delighted to become your friends, I think you will find yourself

* "The King hates Dugald, but Dugald does not care a straw for that."