block, behind a hoarding that indicated rebuilding and
improvement. Further inquiry elicited the fact that the small leases
had been bought up by some capitalist, and that Mr. Callender, with the
others, had benefited thereby. But there was no trace nor clew to his
present locality. He and his daughter seemed to have again vanished with
this second change in their fortunes.

It was a late March morning when the streets were dumb with snow, and
the air was filled with flying granulations that tinkled against the
windows of the Consulate like fairy sleigh-bells, when there was the
stamping of snow-clogged feet in the outer hall, and the door was opened
to Mr. and Miss Callender. For an instant the consul was startled. The
old man appeared as usual--erect, and as frigidly respectable as one
of the icicles that fringed the window, but Miss Ailsa was, to his
astonishment, brilliant with a new-found color, and sparkling with
health and only half-repressed animation. The snow-flakes, scarcely
melting on the brown head of this true daughter of the North, still
crowned her hood; and, as she threw back her brown cloak and disclosed a
plump little scarlet jacket and brown skirt, the consul could not resist
her suggested likeness to some bright-eyed robin redbreast, to whom the
inclement weather had given a charming audacity. And shy and demure as
she still was, it was evident that some change had been wrought in her
other than that evoked by the stimulus of her native sky and air.

To his eager questioning, the old man replied briefly that he had bought
the old cottage at Loch Dour, where they were living, and where he
had erected a small manufactory and laboratory for the making of his
inventions, which had become profitable. The consul reiterated his
delight at meeting them again.

"I'm not so sure of that, sir, when you know the business on which I
come," said Mr. Callender, dropping rigidly into a chair, and clasping
his hands over the crutch of a shepherd-like staff. "Ye mind, perhaps,
that ye conveyed to me, osteensibly at the request of James Gow,
a certain sum of money, for which I gave ye a good and sufficient
guarantee. I thought at the time that it was a most feckless and
unbusiness-like proceeding on the part of James, as it was without
corroboration or advice by letter; but I took the money."

"Do you mean to say that he made no allusion to it in his other
letters?" interrupted the consul, glancing at Ailsa.

"Th