the puir man's awa' clean
gyte."

She smiled just the ghost of a smile at that, then put her hands upon
her ears.

"Oh!" she cried despairingly, "have I not a friend left?"

Mungo sighed and said no more then, but went to Annapla and sought
relief for his feelings in bilingual wrangling with that dark abigail.
At low tide beggars from Glen Croe came to his door with yawning pokes
and all their old effrontery: he astounded them by the fiercest of
receptions, condemned them all eternally for limmers and sorners, lusty
rogues and vagabonds.

"Awa'! awa'!" he cried, an implacable face against their whining
protestations--"Awa', or I'll gie ye the gairde! If I was my uncle
Erchie, I wad pit an end to your argy-bargying wi' hail frae a gun!" But
to Annapla it was, "Puir deevils, it's gey hard to gie them the back o'
the haun' and them sae used to rougher times in Doom. What'll they think
o' us? It's sic a doon-come, but we maun be hainin' seein' Leevie's lost
her jo, and no ither way clear oot o' the bit. I'm seein' a toom girnel
and done beef here lang afore next Martinmas."

These plaints were to a woman blissfully beyond comprehending the full
import of them, for so much was Annapla taken up with her Gift, so misty
and remote the realms of Gaelic dream wherein she moved, that the little
Lowland oddity's perturbation was beneath her serious attention.

Olivia had that day perhaps the bitterest of her life. With love
outside--calling in the evening and fluting in the bower, and ever (as
she thought) occupied with her image even when farther apart--she had
little fault to find with the shabby interior of her home. Now that love
was lost, she sat with her father, oppressed and cold as it had been a
vault. Even in his preoccupation he could not fail to see how ill she
seemed that morning: it appeared to him that she had the look of a
mountain birch stricken by the first of wintry weather.

"My dear," he said, with a tenderness that had been some time absent
from their relations, "you must be taking a change of air. I'm a poor
parent not to have seen before how much you need it." He hastened to
correct what he fancied from her face was a misapprehension. "I am
speaking for your red cheeks, my dear, believe me; I'm wae to see you
like that."

"I will do whatever you wish, father," said Olivia in much agitation.
Coerced she was iron, coaxed she was clay. "I have not been a very good
daughter to you, father; after this I