iar to
Scotland--I was going to say Saint Andrews; and any one who knows the
ancient city will know exactly how it looks in the still, strongly
spiritualized light of such an afternoon, with the ruins, the castle,
cathedral, and St. Regulus's tower standing out sharply against the
intensely blue sky, and on the other side--on both sides--the yellow
sweep of sand curving away into the distance, and melting into the
sunshiny sea.

Many a time, in their prescribed walks with their young tribe, Miss
Williams and Mr. Roy had taken this stroll across the Links and round by
the sands to the mouth of the Eden, leaving behind them a long and
sinuous track of many footsteps, little and large, but now there were
only two lines--"foot-prints on the sands of Time," as he jestingly
called them, turning round and pointing to the marks of the dainty feet
that walked so steadily and straightly beside his own.

"They seem made to go together, those two tracks," said he.

Why did he say it? Was he the kind of man to talk thus without meaning
it? If so, alas! she was not exactly the woman to be thus talked to.
Nothing fell on her lightly. Perhaps it was her misfortune, perhaps even
her fault, but so it was.

Robert Roy did not "make love;" not at all. Possibly he never could
have done it in the ordinary way. Sweet things, polite things were very
difficult to him either to do or to say. Even the tenderness that was in
him came out as if by accident; but, oh! how infinitely tender he could
be! Enough to make any one who loved him die easily, quietly, if only
just holding his hand.

There is an incident in Dickens's touching _Tale of two Cities_, where a
young man going innocent to the guillotine, and riding on the death-cart
with a young girl whom he had never before seen, is able to sustain and
comfort her, even to the last awful moment, by the look of his face and
the clasp of his hand. That man, I have often thought, must have been
something not unlike Robert Roy.

Such men are rare, but they do exist; and it was Fortune's lot, or she
believed it was, to have found one. That was enough. She went along
the shining sands in a dream of perfect content, perfect happiness,
thinking--and was it strange or wrong that she should so think?--that if
it were God's will she should thus walk through life, the thorniest path
would seem smooth, the hardest road easy. She had no fear of life, if
lived beside him; or of death--love is st