a calling; the Cornal made
no error, the soldier's was the life for youth and spirit. He had
no objection now to all their plans for his future, the Army was his
choice.

It was then, at the Boshang Gate that leads to Dhuloch, Maam, Kilblaan
and all the loveliness of Shira Glen, that even his dreaming eyes found
Nan the girl within the gates watching the soldiers pass. Her face was
flushed with transport, her little shoes beat time to the tread of the
soldiers. They passed with a smile compelled upon their sunburnt faces,
to see her so sweet, so beautiful, so sensible to their glory. And
there was among them an ensign, young, slim, and blue-eyed; he wafted
a vagabond kiss as he passed, blowing it from his finger-tips as he
marched in the rear of his company. She tossed her hair from her temples
as the moon throws the cloud apart and beamed brightly and merrily and
sent him back his symbol with a daring charm.

Gilian's dream of the Army fled. At the sight of Nan behind the Boshang
Gate he was startled to recognise that the girls he had thought of
as smiling on the soldier's return had all the smile of this one, the
nut-brown hair of this one, her glance so fearless and withal so kind
and tender. At once the roll of the drums lost its magic for his ear;
a caprice of sun behind a fleck of cloud dulled the splendour of the
Colonel's braid; Gilian lingered at the gate and let the soldiers go
their way.

For a little the girl never looked at him as he stood there with
the world (all but her, perhaps) so commonplace and dull after the
splendours of his mind. Her eyes were fixed upon the marching soldiers
now nearing the Gearron and about her lips played the smile of wonder
and pleasure.

At last the drumming ceased as the soldiers entered the wood of Strone,
still followed by the children. In the silence that fell so suddenly,
the country-side seemed solitary and sad. The great distant melancholy
hills were themselves again with no jealousy of the wayside trees
dreaming on their feet as they swayed in the lullaby wind. Nan turned
with a look yet enraptured and seemed for the first time to know the boy
was there on the other side of the gate alone.

"Oh!" she said, with the shudder of a woman's delight in her accent. "I
wish I were a soldier."

"It might be good enough to be one," he answered, in the same native
tongue her feeling had made her choose unconsciously to express itself.

"But this is the worst of it," sh