ped, barring the way.

She stopped dead. Then she clutched at her skirt, and said feverishly,
"Let me pass, sir, or I shall call for help!"

"Call away," I answered cheerfully. "I will only say that you have run
off from the home which has sheltered you for many years, and that your
friends are very anxious about you. Where are you staying?"

I glanced at her black dress. It was not mourning exactly, but then Irma
never did anything like any one else. A fear took me that it might be
little Louis who was dead, and yet for the life of me I dared not ask,
knowing how she loved the child.

When I asked where she was staying, she plucked again at her skirt,
lifting it a little as when she was being challenged to run a race. But
seeing no way clear, she answered as it were under compulsion, "With my
Aunt Kirkpatrick at the Nun's House!"

At first I had the fear that this might prove to be some Catholic place
like the convent to which she had been sent in Paris. But it turned out
to be only a fine old mansion, standing by itself in a garden with a
small grey lodge to it, far out on the road to the Dean.

"Take me there!" I said, "for I must tell my grandmother what I have
seen of you, or she will be up here by the coach red and angry enough to
dry up the Nor' Loch!"

Irma walked by my side quite silent for a while, and I led her cunningly
so as not to get too soon to our destination. I knew better than to ask
why she had left Heathknowes. If I let her alone, she would soon enough
begin to defend herself. And so it was.

"The lawyers took Louis away to put him to a school here," she said. "It
was time. I knew it, but I could not rest down there without him. So I
came also. I left them all last Wednesday. Your grandmother came herself
with me to Dumfries, and there we saw the lawyers. They had not much to
say to your grandmother, while she----"

"I understand," said I; "she had a great deal to say to them!"

Irma nodded, and for the first time faintly smiled.

"Yes," she answered, "the little old man in the flannel dressing-gown,
of whom you used to tell us, forgot to poke the fire for a long time!"

"So you left them all in good heart about your coming away?" I said.

"Oh, the good souls," she cried, weeping a little at the remembrance,
"never will I see the like till I am back there again. I think they all
loved me--even your Aunt Jen. She gave me her own work-basket and a
psalm book bound in black leather when I