tle lad's shrill treble laugh. Ruleson had
many amiable qualities unused and undeveloped that the boy brought out
in many different ways. In his little grandson's company he was born
again, and became as a little child. This was an actual and visible
conversion. The whole village testified to this wonderful new birth.

On the fourteenth of March the dream of his heart came true. He saw
the little children come running through the sand hills, and over the
heather, to the school. From far and near, they came, wearing their
best clothes, and happy as if it was a holiday. He listened to them
reciting, after their teachers, a morning prayer. He heard them
learning in class together the alphabet, and the first lessons in
numbers and addition, a lesson which all acquired rapidly by some
secret natural process. For if the teacher asked how many two and two
made, he had not to wait a moment for a correct answer from every baby
mouth. It amazed Ruleson, until he remembered that no one had ever
taught him to count. Through generations of clever bargaining mothers,
had this ability become a natural instinct. The Domine thought it
might have done so.

In some way or other, the school made Christine's life very busy. She
was helping weary mothers make little dresses, and little breeches, or
doing a bit of cleaning for them, or perhaps cooking a meal, or
nursing the baby for an hour. She was mending or weaving nets, she was
redding up her own home. She was busy with the washing or ironing, or
hearing Jamie's lessons, or helping her mother with the cooking. Her
hands were never idle, and there was generally a smile on her face, a
song on her lips, or a pleasant word for everyone within the sound of
her cheerful voice.

She had also her own peculiar duties. There were long and frequent
letters from Cluny to answer, and occasionally one from Angus
Ballister, the latter always enclosing a pretty piece of lace, or a
trifle of some kind, special to the city he was in. Ballister's
letters troubled her, for they were written still in that tone of "it
might have been," with a certain faint sense of reproach, as if it was
her fault, that it had not been. This was so cleverly insinuated, that
there was nothing for her to deny, or to complain of. She wished he
would not write, she wished he would cease sending her any reminders
of "days forever gone." His sentimental letters were so evidently the
outcome of a cultivated heart-breaking disappoi