re, and took a turn to the window, her
riding-switch at her teeth.

Now there was an intolerance about Margaret which you will find often
with a proud spirit, and that Bryde should be happy away from her hurt
her like a lash. The women maybe will have a name for it, for there
was a smile in Helen's eyes as Margaret spoke--

"I am glad," said she, "he will have so good a friend as you. Maybe he
will be staying if you were to ask him."

"And you, Margaret?"

"I do not come of folk who ask," said Margaret, with great unconcern;
then for no reason seemingly (but maybe thinking of a certain time when
she all but asked) her neck and face and forehead grew dark with
mantling blood.

"Is he then not of your people who are slow to ask--favours?" said
Helen. "I think so, yes. Do you remember I ride with him a little way
from Scaurdale? There is a moon, and the hills ver' clear and we
gallop."

"I am minding," said Margaret.

"'It is Romance,' I say to him, and he will be carrying me away off to
the hills, and he is laughing.

"'An unwilling captive,' he says.

"'Not ver' unwilling,' I say, for he looked ver' gallant.

"'But a willing captive, she would kiss me,' said Bryde, your cousin,
and then I make no movement of my head, but my eyes are looking at his
laughing down at me--_asking favours_, ma belle, and still I not move,
and he throw back his head (comme ca), and say--

"'I do not beg--even kisses,' very proudly he looks, ma belle, and his
blue eyes laughing. . . ."

"I am remembering that the charm was working, Helen," said Margaret, in
a voice like the north wind for coldness.

"Ah oui," cried Helen, "backwards it work--I kiss _him_ la la," and she
laughed like silver bells a-tinkle.

Now that was a daftlike tale to be telling, but Margaret was for ever
cleaving me with Helen after that. "She is beautiful," she would tell
me, "and merry and a great lady, and I think any man will be loving
her," but there were many nights when Margaret lay wide-eyed, for all
that she drove Bryde from her with jest and laughter. But I think it
was well that she never kent of the meeting of Bryde and Helen
Stockdale at the ford in the burn yonder at the foot of the Urie.

On a summer morning that was, with the heat-haze hardly lifted and long
slender threads of spider webs clinging to the leaves of the birches by
the burnside, and the bracken green and strong, with the white cuckoo
spittals on them that will leave a