alise it yet, her heart had gone out into the
storm after Gavin, and could never come back. It was still following
him over the perils of the high seas and into the blood and carnage of
the battlefield, and it valued farms and stock and fine houses less
than the dust.

And so Christina was more dissatisfied than she had ever been in her
life, and she lay awake nights wondering what she should do, and how
she could possibly extricate herself from the impossible position in
which she found herself.

And to make matters worse or better, she did not know which, Gavin
wrote to her, and she wrote him long letters in reply. And she grew
into the habit of running over the hills to Craig-Ellachie to cheer the
Grant Girls, and, of course, they talked of their soldier-hero all the
time, and of nothing else.

The Aunties literally lived by his letters. Everything was dated by
them.

"We started yon crock o' butter jist the day Gavie's first letter came
from France," Auntie Janet would say. "It's time it was finished."

"Gavie's letter was a bit late this week," they announced at another
time, "so we didn't start the ironin' till it came. It jist seemed as
if we couldn't settle down."

Gavin's letters were certainly worth waiting for, Christina had to
confess. He wrote much easier than he spoke, and his happiness in
being permitted to write to her at all filled them with a quiet humour.
Christina's eyes searched them just a little wistfully for any hint of
the feeling he had displayed in his farewell. But there was none.
Gavin was too much the true gentleman to presume on that parting. He
told her he had the little ring safe, and that it was his most precious
possession, but beyond that he did not refer to that last evening.
There was never a hint of hardship, even after he reached the Front,
and was in many a desperate encounter. It was only all joy that he was
able to be in the struggle for right. He had just one anxiety and that
was lest his Aunts be lonely, and he wondered if she would be so good
as to comfort them just a little when she could.

And Christina wrote him long letters in return and felt like a criminal
in her double dealing. She knew she was wrong but she could not make a
decision. On the one hand was all that she could hope this world could
offer, and on the other nothing but a true and gallant heart. She was
angry and ashamed of herself and very restless, and withal, in spite of
herself, qui