with outstretched necks, watching for a sign of the girl's return, and
wondering, as the shadows lengthened, what had become of her.

At last, just as the rosy sunset gilding began to overspread the
landscape, Bessie Hennock, weeping into her apron, made her appearance
without her companion.

Her account of their adventures was curious.

I will relate the substance of it more connectedly than her agitation
would allow her to give it, and without the disguise of the rude
Northumbrian dialect.

The girl said, that, as they got along together among the brambles
that grow beside the brook that bounds the Pie-Mag field, she on a
sudden saw a very tall big-boned man, with an ill-favoured smirched
face, and dressed in worn and rusty black, standing at the other side
of a little stream. She was frightened; and while looking at this
dirty, wicked, starved figure, Laura Silver Bell touched her, gazing
at the same tall scarecrow, but with a countenance full of confusion
and even rapture. She was peeping through the bush behind which she
stood, and with a sigh she said:

"Is na that a conny lad? Agoy! See his bonny velvet clothes, his sword
and sash; that's a lord, I can tell ye; and weel I know who he
follows, who he luves, and who he'll wed."

Bessie Hennock thought her companion daft.

"See how luvesome he luks!" whispered Laura.

Bessie looked again, and saw him gazing at her companion with a
malignant smile, and at the same time he beckoned her to approach.

"Darrat ta! gaa not near him! he'll wring thy neck!" gasped Bessie in
great fear, as she saw Laura step forward with a look of beautiful
bashfulness and joy.

She took the hand he stretched across the stream, more for love of the
hand than any need of help, and in a moment was across and by his
side, and his long arm about her waist.

"Fares te weel, Bessie, I'm gain my ways," she called, leaning her
head to his shoulder; "and tell gud Fadder Lew I'm gain my ways to be
happy, and may be, at lang last, I'll see him again."

And with a farewell wave of her hand, she went away with her dismal
partner; and Laura Silver Bell was never more seen at home, or among
the "coppies" and "wickwoods," the bonny fields and bosky hollows, by
Dardale Moss.

Bessie Hennock followed them for a time.

She crossed the brook, and though they seemed to move slowly enough,
she was obliged to run to keep them in view; and she all the time
cried to her continually, "Come back, co