sting and crying, when
suddenly all the pleasant hubbub stood still, for Miss Dunreddin was
in the hall, and her page behind her, and she beckoned me from my post
aloft on a foot-board, summoning the deserters before me and awarding
them future expiations, amidst all manner of jeering and jinking and
laughter.

A gentleman from the Provinces to see me in the little parlor: he had
brought us letters from home, and after Miss Dunreddin had broken the
seals she judged we might have them, and I was at liberty for an hour,
and meantime Angus Ingestre awaited me. Angus! I sprang down the stairs,
my cheeks aglow, my heart on my lips, and only paused, finger on lock,
wondering and hesitating and fearing, till the door was flung open, and
I drawn in with two hands shut fast on my own, and two eyes--great blue
Ingestre eyes--looking down on me from the face so far above: for he
towered like a Philistine.

"And is it Angus?" I cried. For how was I to know the boy I had left in
a midshipman's jacket, in this mainmast of a man, undress-uniform and
all?

"I've no need to ask, Is it Alice?" he answered. "The same little peach
of a chin!"

"Nay, but, Angus,--'t will never do,--and I all but grown up!"

"Not my little maid any longer, then?"

But so trembling and glad was I to see him, that I dared no more words,
for I saw the tears glistening in my eyelashes and blinding me with
their dazzling flashes.

So he took me to a seat, and sat beside me, and waited a minute; and
after that waiting it was harder to speak than it had been before, and
every thought went clean out of my head, and every word, and I stared
at my hands till I seemed to see clear through them the pattern of
my dress, and at the last I looked up, and there he had been bending
forward and scanning me all the while; and then Angus laughed, and
caught up my hand and pretended to search it narrowly.

"Ah, yes, indeed," said he, "she is reading the future in her palm,
reading it backward, and finding out what this Angus Ingestre has to do
with her fate!"

"Nay, but,"----said I, and then held fast again.

"Here's a young woman that's keen to hear of her home, of her sisters,
of Queen Mary Strathsay, and of Margray's little Graeme!"

"What do _I_ care for Johnny Graeme? the little old man!"

"What, indeed? And you'll not be home a day and night before you'll be
tossing and hushing him, and the moon'll not be too good for him to
have, should he cry for it!"