handing the pot to Marcella.

"Oh I do love bramble jelly," she cried, passing it to Jean, who always
ate with them in the good old feudal fashion, right at the foot of the
long table. Jean took a small helping and so did Aunt Janet. After a
while Marcella peered into the pot again.

"Shall we finish it up, Aunt?" she asked, and Aunt Janet shrugged her
shoulders.

"To-day or to-morrow, what's the difference? Do you really like it so
much as that?" she added, watching the girl curiously.

"I love it! Bramble jelly and seed cake! What do you think, Aunt? When
I get very old and die, Mrs. Mactavish and Jock's wife will be in heaven
already, brought for the purpose by the Angel Gabriel, and they'll make
bramble jelly and seed cake for the love feast for me!" she said, eating
a spoonful without spreading it on oatcake, encouraged by her aunt's
unwonted extravagance. "I can't be philosophical about bramble jelly!"

Aunt Janet watched the girl as though she could not believe in anything
so sincere as this love of sweet things. Then she said a little sadly:

"There's not a thing on earth that I want or love."

"Because you've ruled yourself out of everything! I love to want things
because always they may be just round the corner. And if they aren't,
there's the fun of thinking they are. And always there's another corner
after the last one. I'd rather _die_ of hungriness than never be
hungry."

"Oh, you'll die of hungriness, I expect. That is, if you're lucky," said
Aunt Janet. "I shall just drop out of life some day."

Suddenly time gave a sharp leap forward and Marcella saw herself sitting
there as Aunt Janet was sitting, a dead soul in a dulled body, waiting
to drop out of life. The words of Wullie and the gipsy slid into her
mind--"they go on strange roads"--and she got a swift vision of herself
in armour riding out gaily along a strange road with her knight beside
her. Elbowing that out came something she had seen that had amazed her a
few days ago. In the evenings she and Aunt Janet sat in the book-room,
into which they had taken a little table of Rose's and a few chairs.
Beside the fire-place had been one of those ancient presses in which the
old farmer had kept his whisky, his pipes and his account books. When
the man from Christy's came to buy the furniture he had noticed the
beautifully carved oak doors of the press and offered such a tempting
sum for them that Aunt Janet had let them go, nailing a piece of o