eep-like instinct which impelled him to follow those who had gone on
before. Baubie saw this, and, just waiting to let him get well under way
and settle into his gait, she gathered herself up and sprang across the
road upon him with the suddenness and rapidity of a flash.

He fairly staggered with surprise. There she was, exactly as he had left
her, dusty, barefooted and bareheaded. The wind had tossed up her hair,
which indeed was only too obedient to its will, and it clustered all the
more wildly about her face because of having been cropped to the
regulation length of the refuge.

"Lassie, is't you?" he ejaculated, lost in astonishment. Then, realizing
the fact, he gave expression to his feeling by grinning in a convulsive
kind of way and clapping her once or twice on the shoulder next him.
"Od! I niver! Didna the leddy--"

Baubie cut him short. "Sed I widna bide," she observed curtly and
significantly.

Gestures and looks convey, among people like the Wisharts, far more
meaning than words, and Baubie's father perfectly understood from the
manner and tone of her pregnant remark that she had run away from
school, and had severed the connection between herself and the "kind
leddy," and that in consequence the situation was highly risky for both.
They remained standing still for a moment, looking at each other. The
boy and the woman were already out of sight, and the white, dusty
high-road seemed all their own domain.

Wishart shuffled with his feet once more, and looked in the direction
of Princes street, and then at Baubie inquiringly. It was for her, as
usual, to decide. Baubie had been his Providence for as long as he had
memory for--no great length of time. He was conjecturing in his own mind
vaguely whether his Providence had, by any chance, got the desiderated
three shillings necessary for the redemption of the banjo hidden away in
the Rob Roy tartan. He would not have been surprised had it been so, and
he would have asked no questions.

Seeing that her eyes followed the direction of his with a forbidding
frown, he said tentatively, "Ye didn'--didna--"

"What?" snapped Baubie crossly: she divined his meaning exactly. "Come
awa' wi' ye!" she ordered, facing right round countryward.

"We'll gae awa' til Glasgae, Baubie, eh? I'm thinkin' to yer auntie's.
_She_"--with a gesture of his head backward at the prison--"will no' be
oot this month; sae she'll niver need to ken, eh?"

Baubie nodded. He only spoke h