f necessary,
though I don't want to give him away if I can help it."

"Oh no!" she said, "we mustn't interfere with him. But supposing Lady
Cromarty doesn't believe----"

"Come straight to Stanesland! Will you?"

"Run away again?"

"It's the direction you run in that matters," said he. "Now, mind you,
that's understood!"

She was silent for a little and then she said:

"I can't understand why these horrible stories associate Malcolm and me.
Why should we have conspired to do such a dreadful thing?"

He stared at her, and then hesitated.

"Because--well, being engaged to him----"

"Engaged to Malcolm!" she exclaimed. "Whatever put that into people's
heads?"

"What!" he cried. "Aren't you?"

"Good gracious no! Was _that_ the reason then?"

He seemed too lost in his own thoughts to answer her; but they were
evidently not unhappy thoughts this time.

"Who can have started such a story?" she demanded.

"Who started it?" he repeated and then was immersed in thought again;
only now there was a grim look on his face.

"Well anyhow," he cried, in a minute or two, "we're out of that wood!
Aren't we, Louisa?"

"Yes, Uncle Ned," she smiled back.

He stirred impulsively in his seat and then seemed to check himself, and
for the rest of the journey he appeared to be divided between content
with the present hour and an impulse to improve upon it. And then before
he had realised where they were, they had stopped at a station, and she
was exclaiming:

"Oh, I must get out here! I've left my bike in the station!"

"Look here," said he, with his hand on the door handle, "before you go
you've got to swear that you'll come straight to Stanesland if there's
another particle of trouble. Swear?"

"But what about Miss Cromarty?" she smiled.

"Miss Cromarty will say precisely the same as I do," he said with a
curiously significant emphasis. "So now, I don't open this door till you
promise!"

"I promise!" said she, and then she was standing on the platform waving
a farewell.

"I half wish I'd risked it!" he said to himself with a sigh as the train
moved on, and then he ruminated with an expression on his face that
seemed to suggest a risk merely deferred.

XXIX

BROTHER AND SISTER

Ned Cromarty found his sister in her room.

"Well, Ned," she asked, "where on earth have you been?"

He shut the door before he answered, and then came up to the fireplace,
and planted himself in front of her.

"Who told y