d was for off, but at first
her ladyship was no for letting her go. Indeed she went the length of
sending for me and telling me the young lady was not to be permitted to
shift her luggage out of the house or use any conveyance."

"But Bisset was splendid!" cried Cicely. "Do you know what the foolish
man did? He gave up his situation and took me away!"

Bisset, the man, permitted a gleam of pleasure to illuminate his blunt
features; but Bisset, the philosopher, protested with some dignity.

"It was a mere matter of principle, sir. Detention of luggage like yon
is no legal. I tellt her ladyship flatly that she'd find herself afore
the Shirra', and that I was no going to abet any such proceedings. I
further informed her, sir, of my candid opinion of Simon Rattar, and I
said plainly that he was probably meaning to marry her and get the
estate under his thumb, and these were the kind o' tricks rascally
lawyers took in foolish women wi'."

"You told Lady Cromarty that!" exclaimed Ned. "And what did she say?"

"We had a few disagreeable passages, as it were, sir," said the
philosopher calmly. "And then I borrowed yon trap and having advised
Miss Farmond to come to Stanesland and she being amenable, I just
brought her along to you."

"Oh, it was on your advice then?"

"Yes, sir."

Cicely and her host exchanged one fleeting glance and then looked
extremely unconscious.

"She's derned wise!" said he to himself.

He held out his hand to the gratified counsellor.

"Well done, Bisset, you've touched your top form to-day, and I may tell
you I've been wanting some one like you badly for a long while, if you
are willing to stay on with me. Put that in your pipe, Bisset, and smoke
over it! And now, you know your way, go and get yourself some tea, and a
drink of the wildest poison you fancy!"

Hardly was the door closed behind him than the laird put his fate to the
test as promptly and directly as he did most other things.

"I want you to stop on too, Cicely--for ever. Will you?"

Her eyes, shyly questioning for a moment and then shyly tender, answered
his question before her lips had moved, and it would have been hard to
convince them that the minutes which followed ever had a parallel within
human experience.

A little later he confessed:

"Do you know, Cicely, I've always had a funky feeling that if I ever
proposed my glass eye would drop out!"

The next event was the somewhat sudden entry of Lilian Cromarty, and