ogether changed.

"What's the matter?" she exclaimed.

His mind calmed down. Composing his countenance, he shook his head
sadly.

"I don't think he'll get over it."

She laid her hand upon his arm with a quick, involuntary gesture.

"But what has happened? Tell me!"

The wisdom of age and the shrewdness of youth twinkled together in Mr.
Walkingshaw's eye, but he managed to retain a decorously solemn air.

"You are really concerned this time?"

"Of course! I--I mean, naturally."

He drew her hand through his arm and led her along the fringe of the
pine woods.

"Come and see," he said gently. "Poor boy he's had a bad fall."

"What! Is he here--with you?"

"Yes--yes," he answered, with an absent and melancholy air.

He led her a few paces into the trees, and there, seated on a fallen
trunk, they saw the victim of fate smoking a cigarette with a meditative
air. He sprang to his feet with a light in his eye that might have been
the result of some acute disaster, but scarcely looked like it.

"Frank, my boy," said his father, "I have just been explaining to Ellen
that you have fallen"--he turned to the girl with a merry air--"in
love!" he chuckled, and the next moment they were listening to his
flying footsteps and looking at one another.

CHAPTER II

High overhead the pines murmured gently, and Mr. Walkingshaw, strolling
through the quiet colonnades below in solitude and shade, heard the
strangest messages whispered down by those riotous tree-tops. He was no
longer even middle-aged! Or at least his heart certainly was not. It
seemed to keep a decade or so younger than his body, and Heaven knew
that was growing younger fast enough! At this rate how much longer could
he play the beneficent parent? Good Lord, he had jolly nearly fallen
head over ears in love with sweet Ellen Berstoun in the course of five
minutes' conversation! She wasn't a day too old for Heriot W. That's to
say, he could do with a lassie of that age fine, and, by Gad, he
shouldn't wonder but Ellen mightn't have rather cottoned to him if her
heart had been free. She looked deuced coy when she thought he was
proposing. Yes, a girl like Ellen was the ticket for him. But in that
case, what about Madge?

For several minutes Mr. Walkingshaw stood very solemnly studying the
bark on an entirely ordinary pine, concluding his scrutiny by hitting it
a sharp smack with his walking-stick and turning away from the sight of
it with apparent dis