to herself, "I have
no mother. I never saw her; at least, I cannot remember ever seeing
her, and she was not Scotch."

"No?" said Douglas. "Then we have something in common: my people on my
father's side were Scotch, but all my mother's people belong to the
South."

"And mine, too," said the girl. "But what can it be to you?" And
again she seemed to be thinking of something far away.

"Do you know," said the young man, "you are the first person I have
spoken to since morning? I have been on the tramp all the day. I had
my lunch by the side of a stream, and I have kept away from every
house. I wanted to be alone. I expect that is why I want you to tell
me why you don't seem happy."

Again the girl looked at him curiously. "I think I should go mad
sometimes," she said, "if I did not think my dead mother was near me.
I do not mean when I am out here alone on the moors, but it's home that
makes it so hard."

"Tell me," said the young fellow. It did not seem to him as though he
were talking to a stranger at all. The girl did not belong to his
class, and evidently her associations and education removed her far
from him, yet he had an instinctive sympathy with her. After all, I
suppose every young fellow is attracted by a young pretty face, wild,
longing eyes, and beautiful features suggestive of romance and poetry
and unsatisfied yearnings.

"You see," said the girl, "my father was a fisherman. Years ago, when
he was a young man, he sailed down the West of England, and his boat
harboured at a little Cornish village called St. Ives. There he met my
mother, and I have heard him say that she had Spanish blood in her
veins. Anyhow, they fell in love with each other and got married.

"I suppose her father and mother were very angry, and so he took her
away from St. Ives altogether, and came back here to Scotland. Just at
that time his father died, and left our farm to him. So my father gave
up fishing, and brought mother here, but I had not been born long
before mother died, so you see I never knew her. My father did not
remain unmarried long: the second time he married a Scotswoman, and I
hate the Scotch."

"Why?" asked Graham.

"Oh, well, my father says that the Cornish people are wild and
imaginative, and my stepmother hasn't any imagination. Years ago I
used to read Burns's poems and Sir Walter Scott's stories, but mother
took the books from me. She says a farmer's daughter has no time for
poet