elt,--the true
heather, not sticks like yon," pointing a contemptuous finger toward
Katie's bonnet. "Where did she get it?"

"Mother's always the heather growing in the house," answered Katie. "She
says she's homesick unless she sees it. It was grandmother brought it
over in the first, and it's never been let die out."

"My mother the same," said Donald. "It's the first blossom I remember,
an' I'm thinking it will be the last," he continued, gazing at Katie
absently; but his face did not look as if it were absently he gazed.
There was a glow on his cheeks, and an intense expression in his eyes
which Katie had never seen there. They warmed her heart.

"Yes," she said, "one can never forget what one has loved in the youth."

"True, Katie, true. There's nothing like one's own and earliest,"
replied Donald, full of his new and thrilling emotion; and as he said it
he reached out his hand and took hold of Katie's, as if they were boy
and girl together. "Many's the time I've raced wi' ye this way, Katie,"
he said affectionately.

"Ay, when I was a wee thing; an' ye always let go my hand at last, and
pretended I could outrin ye," laughed Katie, blissful tears filling her
eyes.

What a happy day was this! Had it not been an inspiration to bring
Donald back to the old farm-house? Katie was sure it had. She was filled
with sweet reveries; and so silent on the way home that her merry
friends joked her unmercifully about her long walk inland with the
Captain.

It was late in the night, or rather it was early the next morning, when
the "Heather Bell" reached her wharf.

"I'll go up with ye, Katie," said Donald. "It's not decent for ye to go
alone."

And when he bade her good-night he looked half-wistfully in her face,
and said: "But it's a lonely house for ye to come to, Katie, an' not a
soul but yourself in it." And he held her hand in his affectionately, as
a cousin might.

Katie's heart beat like a hammer in her bosom at these words, but she
answered gravely: "Yes, it was sorely lonely at first, an' I wearied
myself out to get them to give me Elspie to learn the business wi' me;
but I'm more used to it now."

"That is what I was thinkin'," said Donald, "that if the two o' ye were
here together, ye'd not be so lonely. Would she not like to come?"

"Ay, that would she," replied the unconscious Katie; "she pines to be
with me. I'm more her mother than the mother herself; but they'll never
consent."

"She's bonny," s