me.

One evening, when a wind that blew from the west, and seemed to smell
of the roses of the sunset, was filling her rosy heart with joy--Annie
sat in a rough little seat, scarcely an arbour, at the bottom of a
garden of the true country order, where all the dear old-fashioned
glories of sweet-peas, cabbage-roses, larkspur, gardener's garters,
honesty, poppies, and peonies, grew in homely companionship with
gooseberry and currant bushes, with potatoes and pease. The scent of
the sunset came in reality from a _cheval de frise_ of wallflower on
the coping of the low stone wall behind where she was sitting with her
Milton. She read aloud in a low voice that sonnet beginning "_Lady that
in the prime of earliest youth_." As she finished it, a voice, as low,
said, almost in her ear,

"That's you, Annie."

Alec was looking over the garden wall behind her.

"Eh, Alec," she cried, starting to her feet, at once shocked and
delighted, "dinna say that. It's dreidfu' to hear ye say sic a thing. I
wish I was a wee like her."

"Weel, Annie, I think ye're jist like her. But come oot wi' me. I hae a
story to tell ye. Gie me yer han', and pit yer fit upo' the seat."

She was over the wall in a moment, and they were soon seated under the
trees of the copse near which Annie had met him before. The brown
twilight was coming on, and a warm sleepy hush pervaded earth and air,
broken only by the stream below them, cantering away over its stones to
join the Wan Water. Neither of them was inclined to quarrel with the
treeless country about them: they were lapped in foliage; nor with the
desolate moorland hills around them: they only drove them closer
together.

Time unmeasured by either passed without speech.

"They tell't me," said Alec at length, "that you and Curly had made it
up."

"Alec!" exclaimed Annie, and looked up in his face as if he had accused
her of infidelity, but, instantly dropping her eyes, said no more.

"I wad hae fun' ye oot afore a day was ower, gin it hadna been for
that."

Annie's heart beat violently, but she said nothing, and, after a
silence, Alec went on.

"Did my mother ever tell ye about how the barque was lost?"

"No, Alec."

"It was a terrible snow-storm with wind. We couldn't see more than a
few yards a-head. We were under bare poles, but we couldn't keep from
drifting. All in a moment a huge ghastly thing came out of the gloamin'
to windward, bore down on us like a spectre, and dashed us on