d he believe his
eyes? he saw Christie Johnstone kiss this man's hand, who then, taking
her head gently in his two hands, placed a kiss upon her brow, while she
seemed to yield lovingly to the caress.

Gatty turned faint, sick; for a moment everything swam before his eyes;
he recovered himself, they were gone.

He darted round to intercept them; Christie had slipped away somewhere;
he encountered the man alone!

CHAPTER XV.

CHRISTIE'S situation requires to be explained.

On leaving Gatty and his mother, she went to her own house. Flucker--who
after looking upon her for years as an inconvenient appendage, except
at dinnertime, had fallen in love with her in a manner that was half
pathetic, half laughable, all things considered--saw by her face she
had received a blow, and raising himself in the bed, inquired anxiously,
"What ailed her?"

At these kind words, Christie Johnstone laid her cheek upon the pillow
beside Flucker's and said:

"Oh, my laamb, be kind to your puir sister fra' this hoor, for she has
naething i' the warld noo but yoursel'."

Flucker began to sob at this.

Christie could not cry; her heart was like a lump of lead in her bosom;
but she put her arm round his neck, and at the sight of his sympathy she
panted heavily, but could not shed a tear--she was sore stricken.

Presently Jean came in, and, as the poor girl's head ached as well
as her heart, they forced her to go and sit in the air. She took her
creepie and sat, and looked on the sea; but, whether she looked seaward
or landward, all seemed unreal; not things, but hard pictures of things,
some moving, some still. Life seemed ended--she had lost her love.

An hour she sat in this miserable trance; she was diverted into a
better, because a somewhat less dangerous form of grief, by one of those
trifling circumstances that often penetrate to the human heart when
inaccessible to greater things.

Willy the fiddler and his brother came through the town, playing as they
went, according to custom; their music floated past Christie's ears
like some drowsy chime, until, all of a sudden, they struck up the old
English air, "Speed the Plow."

Now it was to this tune Charles Gatty had danced with her their first
dance the night they made acquaintance.

Christie listened, lifted up her hands, and crying:

"Oh, what will I do? what will I do?" burst into a passion of grief.

She put her apron over her head, and rocked herself, and sobbed