ing cheeks of Margaret pale a little, her
lips press together, and her chin become a little proud, but her eyes
never wavered; but Mistress Helen beats me to be describing. There was
an elegance about her and an air of languor, maybe from her sombre dark
eyes, yet her every movement was graceful, and her smile a thing to be
looking for, and she was slender as the stalk of a bluebell. The Laird
of Scaurdale was in great humour, well on to seventy, his teeth still
strong and white, and his shoulders with but a horseman's stoop.

"Kiss, my dearies," says he; "was ever such dainty ladies? Hugh, man,
where are your manners, and you such a namely man among the Saint Andra
lassies. Hoots, man, this blateness does not become ye; ye've slept
wi' the lass before. Ha, Saint Bryde o' the Mountains," says he to
Bryde, "well done, sir," for Mistress Helen, with a quick flashing
upward glance, had rendered her little hand for salutation.

And at his words I saw, like a flash, a look of cold hate leap in the
blue eyes of Margaret McBride.

I did much thinking while the others would be talking, and I thought of
the day, fresh from the college, when we ploughed the stubble and Belle
brought the wean in the tartan shawl,--the wean that grat beside Hugh
in the old room when Belle carried her from the wee byre--the wean that
was carried to McCurdy's hut with Belle and Dan McBride, and had lain
in the crook of the arm of John of Scaurdale that night when McGilp had
shown a light away seaward.

And there she was before me, Helen Stockdale, and I minded McGilp's
words, "Yon's an heiress."

And sitting there in dour silence, there came on me such a longing for
Dan McBride that I could have wept. Eighteen years had I watched the
ploughing and the harvesting, the cutting of the peats and the carting
of hay, and never a word of Dan since the queer outlandish messenger
carried my word to him to come home. The boys were grown men, the
Laird and his Lady getting on in years, and the old folk going away
with every winter, and never a word.

McGilp and his _Seagull_ were not so often at the cove these last
years, and yet McKinnon had a crack with him in Tiree, where he was
buying a horse or two.

"Young Dan's deid," said McKinnon, "and Dol Beag will be hirpling aboot
and eating his kail broth for many's the day."

There was one that never doubted--Belle, and after eighteen years she
was little changed, a weary look sometimes in her eyes