devils.

It was an easy matter for Lois to find her way among the old
apple-trees--of which one was showing an early blossom or two on the
sunny side--to the boulevard below, and thence to the wood running up
the bluff. Though she had not been here since the berry-picking days of
childhood, she knew the spot in which Rosie was likely to be found. As a
matter of fact, having climbed the path that ran beneath oaks and
through patches of brakes, spleenwort, and lady-ferns, she was
astonished to hear a faint, plaintive singing, and stopped to listen.
The voice was poignantly thin and sweet, with the frail, melancholy
sound she had heard from distant shepherds' pipes in Switzerland. Had
she not, after a few seconds, recognized the air, she would have been
unable to detect the words:

"Ah, dinna ye mind, Lord Gregory,
By bonnie Irvinside,
Where first I owned the virgin love
I long, long had denied?"

Though the singer was invisible, Lois knew she could not be far away,
since the voice was too weak to carry. She was about to go forward when
the faint melody began again:

"An exile from my father's ha'
And a' for loving thee;
At least be pity to me shown,
If love it may na' be."

Placing the voice now as near the great oak-tree circled by a seat, just
below the point where the ascending bluff broke fifty feet to the pond
beneath, Lois went rapidly up the last few yards of the ascent.

Rosie was seated with her back to the gnarled trunk, while she looked
out over the half-mile of dancing blue wavelets to where, on the other
side, the brown, wooden houses of the Thorley estate swept down to the
shore. She rose on seeing the visitor approach, showing a startled
disposition to run away. This she might have done had not Lois caught
her by the hand and detained her.

"I know all about everything, Rosie--about everything."

She meant that she understood the situation not only as regarding one
brother, but as regarding both. Rosie's response was without interest or
curiosity. "Do you?"

"Yes, Rosie; and I want to talk to you about it. Let us sit down."

Still holding the girl's hands in a manner that compelled her to reseat
herself, she examined the little face for the charm that had thrown such
a spell on Thor. With a pang she owned to herself that she found it. No
one could look at Thor with that expression of entreaty without reaching
all that was most tender in his soul.

For