lant was not so manifest; deeplearned in "symptoms" through the study of romance, she missed the persiflage with which they used to treat each other, and, singularly, Norah did not seem to care. Aunt Amelia wondered. When Aunt Amelia wondered thus, the world seemed in a mumbling conspiracy. But if she failed vexatiously to catch the quieter passages of those bouts of pleasantry that now seemed always going on between Penelope and Maurice at the dinner-table, her eyes could discern a nervous warmth in the young man's manner, deferential droop of the shoulders, a meekness that was new. She even thought she saw a softer light in the eyes of the parson's daughter. She took immediate alarm, in Norah's interest.

"Norah," she said to her niece with tremulous mysteriousness at the earliest opportunity, "don't you think Penelope's bolder since she has been mixing with those people in the village?"

"Only the very nicest kind of boldness would have sent her there, aunt," said Norah. "What makes you say so?"

Her aunt was wrapt at once in Delphian vapours, her air was charged with portent like a thunder-cloud, in hints and innuendoes the oracle breathed a doubt of Reggy's faithfulness. He was not so much to blame, of course, as the bold, designing girl who led him on.

Norah maintained her gravity with an effort. "Are you not mistaken, aunt?" she asked

with a subtlety of which she was herself ashamed. "Has— has Andy noticed?"

Her aunt cast up her eyes in a manner to indicate the utter hopelessness of getting Andrew Schaw to notice anything really worth his observation. A man who even now appeared to have no interest in the febrile rise of Athabascas would notice nothing-even what was passing on beneath his very nose. And she was right; Sir Andrew had not noticed.

He frowned when Aunt Amelia, as Norah had expected, came to him with inklings; for the first time in his life he was almost rude to her. "What! what!" he said, "do I notice anything! In a tone like that! Damn it, I would sooner put my eye to a keyhole. No, ma'm, no, ma'm -blind stone blind!" He grew very red; he spluttered, and Norah, when she heard it all from her astonished aunt, ran up to her room and foolishly kissed a worn-out slipper.

But all the same it spoiled his meals to know that his aunt was spying, and in spite of himself he realised a quite unusual spirit of conciliation in his guest's address to Pen, in Pen a singular vivacity. Norah, moreover, was at times quite flagrantly deserted, he would meet them in the avenue: together, he learned, they had visited Watty Fraser; it was Pen who naïvely told him, it was Reginald who blushed.

"Can a man be in love wi' twa women at the same time? the fiddler, later in the day, asked Peter Wyse. "There's

Sir Andrew came upon his cousin one day singing this to herself at the piano, with a feeling that seemed poignant; he was beset with pity and annoyance.

But though Norah might sing of broken wings with all the expression she had learned from her music-master, loading the words with a fictitious despair, the bird was now as strong in the breast of her as ever. Maurice and Pen might have their own enjoyments; hers were secret joys unshared with any one-sweet intuitions, lively hopes, though sometimes they were oddly blended, as it might appear, with very common pleasures. For instance, Athabascas. If Mr Birrell could never rouse his client to his own great state of excitation at the way that marvellous stock kept climbing over the eighties, over the nineties, over the hundreds, he could always count on Norah's glee. That, if you please, was the lass with a pencil!-she summed the ascending profits of her cousin

VOL. CLXXXVIII.-NO. MOXL.

with the relish of a Jew. Himself, he only vaguely understood the Writer's figures; he would run his fingers through his hair and say, "Quite good! Quite good! I see they have opened a new post farther north at a place deliciously called Wealth-of-Waters; a name like that enriches the map of Canada."

"But the thing is, stupid, that you're getting rich!" said Norah, losing patience, and Jamie Birrell crackled with exultant laughter at the baronet's bewilderment. "We're fairly rollin' in't," he said, with a heave of his shoulders, as if with his client he swam through seas of wealth. "It was well for you that your father took the fancy for the voyajoors, Sir Andrew, and got in so soon, and that you were wise enough to back his fancy."

"I had aye a fancy for Athabascas," said Sir Andrew. "I liked the name. It's spoiled for me in the meantime, but I liked the name. It had the ring of romance in it. There are names we should support though they never brought a penny to us . . . Athabascas”

He rolled out the

word lusciously. "Snow-shoes and tepees, Red Indians and furs!"

"It's no' the furs that we have to thank, Sir Andrew, no the furs," said Mr Birrell. "It's the land. They're breaking it up in farms; there's a better skin on a farmer than on any beaver."

"H'm!" said Captain Cutlass, visibly depressed, "I don't like that! It takes the gilt

20

It's not

from my Athabascas, do you know? My poor voyageurs! I notice of late the name has lost its charm for me. a name to be bandied about in the commercial columns. It used to brace me like a fine spring day; the sound of it was a poem with lakes and forests in it; now it leaves me cold. Eh? How's that?"

"Association," answered Norah readily. "You're confirming Pen's æsthetic theory that beauty's only in one's mind, depending upon memories evoked."

"Ay, ay!" said he, amused. "So that's Penelope's philosophy! Alison, and Jeffreys! How did she cover them?"

.

dis

"I'm sure she has never heard of them, any more than I have done," said Norah. "It's the rule of her life, in nature and in art, to seek in herself and her past experience for every thrill she feels."

That afternoon he saddled the mare, on a sudden impulse, and, indifferent to the frost, bathed in Whitfarlane Bay, a sacrament wherein he often worshipped God and purged his sins. He had ridden west on roads as sonorous as seasoned wood, with fairy-bells of tinkling ice-drops on the wayside trees, but the sting of the brine was yet upon his skin, and the sea's rejuvenation in his breast, when the change of weather that his sailor eye had earlier foreseen came with amazing quickness. The night had a worn-out moon that staggered

across the soud of clouds a while and then was whelmed. He sheltered from torrential rain, and supped in Clashgour Farm; the rain abated, but the night, when he emerged again and trotted out of the light of Fleming's lantern, appeared the very throat of tempest.

Powrie was waiting up for him. “A wild night, sir!" he cried, throwing open the stabledoor.

"Wild's no' the word for't, Peter," shouted back his master in the tumult of the yard. "It's wicked! Wicked!"

"We didn't expect you the night, sir; we were sure you would put up at Beswick's, and they're all in bed except the mistress," Powrie told him in the stable, that was like a haven consecrate to calm.

He crossed to the house, despondent, feeling a widower's loneliness; Jean had sat up for him always, no matter how late the hour. The spirit that had tingled in him as he braced to the storm's antagonism, and made him almost shout in fellowship with the roaring forest, immediately died down; he looked at the dark front of his home, in whose eaves the blast went moaning-cliff-like inhospitality!

The feeling vanished on the threshold and gave place to consolation, for there was Norah waiting him in the hall! She seemed the very soul of loving-kindness, like a beacon set on a harbour bar.

"I knew," she said, "you would come home." She radiated warm waves of welcome.

He had hardly lapsed into actual sleep when a hammering on his door set him wide awake again, and above the gale, that appeared to shake the house to its foundations, he heard her agitated voice. "Come out immediately," she said, "the west wing is on fire."

The household, when he had got outside upon the lawn, was gathered before the dairy, Aunt Amelia bleating like a sheep, unconscious of the oddity of her vesture, a flaming window lit the garden, the servants ran with buckets. In the storm's supremacy the fire seemed insignificant, but it belched from Pen's bed-chamber, and Sir Andrew sickened with apprehension.

"Good God! has Pen got out?" he shouted.

A shivering figure at his elbow reassured him. "Reggy