ly manage from me in the long-run."

"But, man! you could leave her only one impression, that you are as
black as she thinks you, and am I not sure you fall far short of that?"

"Thank you," he said; "it is good of you to say it. I am for off
whenever my affairs here are settled, and when I'm the breadth of seas
afar from Inneraora, you'll think as well as you can of John M'Iver,
who'll maybe not grudge having lost the lady's affection if he kept his
friend's and comrade's heart."

He was vastly moved as he spoke. He took my hand and wrung it fiercely;
he turned without another word, good or ill, and strode back on his way
to the camp, leaving me to seek my way to the town alone.

CHAPTER XXXII.--A SCANDAL AND A QUARREL.

On some days I kept to Glen Shim as the tod keeps to the cairn when
heather burns, afraid almost to let even my thoughts wander there lest
they should fly back distressed, to say the hope I cherished was in
vain. I worked in the wood among Use pines that now make rooftrees for
my home, and at nights I went on ttilidh among some of the poorer
houses of the Glen, and found a drug for a mind uneasy in the talcs our
peasants told around the fire. A drug, and yet a drug sometimes with the
very disease in itself I sought for it to kill. For the love of a man
for a maid is the one story of all lands, of all ages, trick it as we
may, and my good people, telling their old ancient histories round the
lire, found, although they never knew it, a young man's quivering heart
a score of times a night.

Still at times, by day and night--ay! in the very midmost watches of the
stars-I walked, in my musing, as I thought, upon the causeyed street,
where perhaps I had been sooner in the actual fact if M'Iver's departure
had not been delayed. He was swaggering, they told me, about the town in
his old regimentals, every pomp of the foreign soldier assumed again as
if they had never been relaxed in all those yean of peace and commerce.
I drank stoutly in the taverns, and 'twas constantly, "Landlady, I'm
the lawing," for the fishermen, that they might love him. A tale went
round, too, that one morning he went to a burial in Kilmalieu, and
Argile was there seeing the last of an old retainer to his long home,
and old Macnachtan came riding down past corpse and mourner with his
only reverence a finger to his cap. "Come down off your horse when death
or Argile goes bye," cried M'Iver, hauling the laird off his saddle. B