"You will pardon me, Mr. Rowallan," she said, "if I have startled you. I
am grieved for what is happening--more sorry than I can say--my father
thinks that it is his duty, but--"

Duncan Rowallan did not suffer her to go on.

"Pray do not say a word about the matter, Miss Hutchison; believe that I
do not mind at all. I know well the conscientiousness of your father,
and he is quite right to carry out his duty."

"He has no quarrel against you," said Grace.

"Only against my office," said Duncan; "poor office! If it were not for
the peace of this countryside up here against the skies, I should go at
once and be no barrier to the unanimity of the parish."

She seemed to draw a long breath as his words came to her across the
stone dyke.

"Ah," she said, "I hope that you will not go; for if Howpaslet did not
quarrel about you, it would just be something else. But I am sorry you
should be annoyed by our bickerings."

"No one could be less annoyed," said Duncan, smiling; "so perhaps it is
to save some more sensitive person from suffering, that I have been sent
here."

They were very near to each other, these two young people, though the
dyke was between them. They leaned their elbows on it, turning together
and looking down the valley. A scent that was not the scent of flowers
stole on Duncan Rowallan's senses, quickening his pulses, and making him
breathe faster to take it in. He was very near the dark, bird-like head
from which the June wind had blown the love-locks. A balmy breath
surrounded him like a halo--the witchery of youth's attraction, which is
as old as Eden, ambient as the air.

Grace Hutchison may have felt it too, for she shuddered slightly, and
drew her shawl closer about her shoulders.

"My father--" she began, and paused.

"Please do not talk of these things," said Duncan, the heart within him
thrilling to the hinted womanhood which came to him upon the balmy
breath; "I do not care for anything if you are not mine enemy."

"I--your enemy!" she said softly, with a pause between the words; "oh
no, not that."

Her hand fell from the folds of her shawl and lay across the dyke. It
looked a lonely thing, and Duncan Rowallan was sure that it trembled, so
he took it in his. There it fluttered a little and then lay still, as a
taken bird that knows it cannot escape. The dyke was between them, but
they drew very near to it on either side.

Then at the same moment each drew a deep breath, and one look