little farther? It is a shame that you have never seen anything of
Bourhill. Surely you will at least sleep here to-night? or must you run
away again by the nine-fifteen?'

'I can stay, since you are good enough to wish it,' he said a trifle
formally; 'and you know I shall be only too happy to walk anywhere you
like with you.'

'How accommodating!' said Gladys, with a faint touch of ironical humour.
'Well, let us go up to the birch wood. We shall see the moon rising
shortly, if you care about anything so commonplace as the rising of a
moon. To Australia? And when will you come back, Walter?'

'I can't say--perhaps never.'

'And will it cost you no pang to turn your back on the land of brown
heath and shaggy wood, which her children are supposed to adore?' she
asked, still in her old bantering mood.

'She has not done much for me; I leave few but painful memories behind,'
he answered, with a touch of kindness in his voice. 'But I will not say
I go without a pang.'

They remained silent as Gladys led the way through the shrubbery walk,
and up the steep and somewhat rugged way to the birch wood crowning the
little hill which sheltered Bourhill from the northern blast. It was a
still and beautiful evening, with a lovely softness in the air,
suggestive of a universal resting after the stress of the harvest. From
the summit of the little hill they looked across many a fair breadth of
goodly land, where the reapers had been so busy that scarce one field of
growing corn was to be seen. All the woods were growing mellow, and the
fulness and plenty of the autumn were abroad in the land.

'It's dowie at the hint o' hairst, at the wa' gaun o' the swallow,'
quoted Walter in a low voice, and his eye grew moist as it ranged across
the beautiful landscape with something of that unutterable and painful
longing with which, the exile takes his farewell of the land he loves.

'Walter,' said Gladys quite softly, as she leaned against the straight
white trunk of a rowan tree, on which the berries hung rich and red, 'I
have often thought of you since that sad day. Often I wished to write,
but I knew that you would come when you felt like it. Did you
understand?'

'I heard that your marriage was broken off, and I thanked God for that,'
Walter answered; and Gladys heard the tremor in his voice, and saw his
firm, hue mouth take a long, stern curve.

'It did not surprise you?' she asked in the same soft, far-off voice,
which betraye