ll for the surprise that Bates expected.

"Her father," continued Bates, "was decently buried, unknown to me, on
his own land, as is the custom in those parts of the country. The girl
was the person ye saw get up from the coffin--the one that ye were so
frightened of."

This last word of explanation was apparently added that he might be
assured Alec followed him, and the listener, standing still in the
half-darkened room, did not just then feel resentment for the
unnecessary insult. He made some sound to show that he heard.

"Then"--stiffly--"she took the train, and she has been living here ever
since, a very respectable young woman, and much thought of. I'm glad to
have seen her."

"Well?"

"I thought it right to tell ye, and I'm going home to-morrow or next
day."

That was evidently all that was to be told him, and Alec refrained from
all such words as he would like to have emitted. But when he was going
dumbly out of the room, Bates spoke again.

"Ye're young yet; when ye feel inclined to give your heart to any young
thing that you've a caring for, gie it as on the altar of God, and not
for what ye'll get in return, and if ye get in answer what ye're
wanting, thank God for a free gift."

Then Alec knew that Sissy had been unkind to Bates.

The night being yet early, he willingly recognised an obligation to go
and tell Miss Rexford that their mutual solicitude had in some way been
rendered needless. It was easy for him to find the lady he desired to
see, for while the weather was still warm it was the habit in Chellaston
to spend leisure hours outside the house walls rather than in, and Alec
Trenholme had already learned that at evening in the Rexford household
the father and brother were often exhausted by their day's work and
asleep, and the mother occupied by the cribs of her little ones. He
found the house, as usual, all open to the warm dry autumn evening,
doors and windows wide. The dusk was all within and without, except
that, with notes of a mother's lullaby, rays of candle light fell from
the nursery window. As his feet brushed the nearer grass, he dimly saw
Miss Rexford rise from a hammock swung on the verandah, where she had
been lounging with Winifred. She stood behind the verandah railing, and
he in the grass below, and they talked together on this subject that had
grown, without the intention of either, to be so strong a bond of
interest between them. Here it was that Alec could give vent to t