They both started at the sound of a rustle in the heather, followed by the inquiry, in a severe voice,

"Will you require lunch to be brought out here, sir?"

Muir looked inquiringly at his companion.

"Because it will be cold, sir, in another five minutes," the severe voice explained. Kate looked up, and her lips closed tightly as she caught sight of a very thin, sour-faced servant, who was looking at her sideways with suspicion written in every feature; then she went on drawing, saying calmly,—

"I should like some lunch presently, when I have put another wash over my sky.” "May I have the sketch when it is finished?" Muir asked, his left arm aching with the effort of holding the sketching umbrella steady.

"I will see. I wanted it for myself, but as you have been good enough to do general help I suppose I ought to give it to you. do another."

"Yes," said Muir very earnestly.

In that case I shall have to

"Of course you will; and you had better come back soon to do it, because after such a long drought it is perfectly certain to begin drizzling soon, if not pouring."

How his arm ached, but how he dreaded the moment when it would cease to do so! The luxury of pain, so dear to Southern fancy, had touched him lightly with its strange-coloured wings and put queer thoughts in his head; but he personally did not analyse his feeling-he was content to live and to feel.

At last the sketch was carried indoors to dry, and its owner, with a slight headache but a general sense of outing and freedom, willingly assented that it was time for luncheon.

After luncheon, Muir took Kate into the garden and showed her the old hedges and borders of lavender and white heather and the big clumps of old-fashioned crimson damask roses. Kate was charmed at finding that the end of the garden was unfenced and opened on to the heather.

"But don't people carry off your flowers?" she asked.

"Yes, but they are quite welcome. They carry off wood and apples as well; there is, among all other appointed times, a time for appropriating here! But they are welcome," he repeated.

"Mr. Muir," said the girl, suddenly changing the conversation, "they told me the other day that you were a great piper. Do you think you will let me hear what you can make of the pipes when I come to finish my drawing?"

"I shall be only too delighted," he answered gratefully; " and I am so sorry you are going away. How quickly the time goes when you are here! I have felt like another being all the day."

He tried to hold Kate's hand as he said good-bye, but she drew it away, saying with youthful cynicism,-

"Yes, it has been very pleasant; but you can have it all over again, and then perhaps you will get tired of it."

As the boat started she cried out,

"Look at the hills!"

And Muir, though he grudged the very hills their beauty and interest in the eyes of the witch who was leaving him to lament on the shore, was yet fascinated by the wonder of the changing colours of hill and sky. Range beyond range, in every shade of blue and purple, was there. Dark threatening blue and depths of purple, breadths of clear turquoise blue, and, farthest away, fairy ghostly hues of every description. Then came a greater change: the hills deepened into uniform purple, purple clouds

fleeced with silver lay distraught on the face of the sky, dyeing the waters of the Frith with the same gorgeous, half-mournful hue; and to Muir's fancy, a galley with broidered sails and gilt oars and heavenly banners flying, passed through this splendid world, bearing on board his Queen-his Love.

II.

SOME days elapsed before Kate Rothes could again adventure forth in the launch, her uncle, with whom she lived, having developed a passion for sea-fishing which lasted for a whole week. At the end of that time he caught a bad chill from coming home late one night, and was obliged to spend the next week indoors. This opportune catastrophe once more placed the boat at Kate's disposal.

The day of the second expedition rivalled in beauty the day of the first, on completely different lines. There was a grey calm everywhere; the woods, shores, and promontories were all soft grey, like ashes or smoked pearl. Occasionally a few drops of warm rain fell on to the mirror-like surface of the Frith and destroyed momentarily the pale reflections that covered it for miles. It was like the exquisite ghost of the former day; and just as sometimes the echo seems almost more clear and beautiful than the sound, so the ghost or the reflection often seems more perfect than the form itself.

Kate Rothes started earlier than usual on the morning of this day; she disembarked hastily, and, with the stoker in attendance to carry her paraphernalia, she set off for the hill. There she then arranged the materials for a fresh drawing, but had not proceeded far in her work when the most fearsome sounds broke out, a little to the right of the commanding eminence where she sat enthroned, facing the sea. Then it dawned upon her that Muir was probably there with his pipes. She stole cautiously along a path near the clump where she had been sitting, and peered quietly over the top of a huge boulder. There he was, pacing up and down at a short distance from her, a touch of Highland pride and grace in his bearing.

Kate held her hands tightly to the sides of her head during this tuning of the pipes, but as soon as it was over and she could release her ears she was astonished at the nature of the sounds that greeted her.

It seemed like a sudden bursting into song of the solemnities of life underlying all things the continuous current of sound underneath, with the sweet top notes falling from above in sprays and showers, in exquisite large single notes, like the first slow drops of summer rain. Kate crouched closer to the stone, listening to the changes from love-song to lament, till the tears felt very near.

Presently the piper ceased piping and caught sight of his audience. "Hullo!" he cried. "How long have you been there? I never saw you." "You will do for a foreground in the sketch I have just begun," answered Kate; "but you mustn't talk too much, else it may distract my attention."

"But I had rather talk to you than have the sketch"-a disconsolate tone crept into his voice. "I could never fix my mind on anything when you were by."

"Really!" said Kate lightly, and setting her teeth she glared professionally at the clouds above the opposite hill.

'Is it because things interest you more than people?" he persisted. "I heard some one say that of you the other day, but I couldn't believe it."

"Who said so? I know it was the girl with the green eyes I saw you talk to at the show last week? I call her 'the Nettle'!"

To this there was no reply, and ten minutes elapsed in perfect silence save for the occasional flapping of a gull's wings as he flew vigorously forward, beating the air, and then sank aslant and motionless with spread pinions towards the heavy masses of bronze-coloured seaweeds which had been borne in by the tide.

There was peace everywhere except in these two troublesome human beings, who, instead of making the best of the opportunities the gods had given them, were trying hard to get up a commonplace quarrel; she painting as if her bread depended on it, with the amiable object of paining him, and he looking as sinister as his blue eyes and sunny hair would allow.

They were so goodly a pair that it was a pity there was no one there to look at them, or to scold them for not using the golden moments more profitably. But there was no one, and her long, half-closed eyes remained fixed on outlines and shadows, while his bright, open ones stared angrily at the glass eyes of the badger on his sporan.

At last, irritated past endurance by the steady dabble of the paint-brush in the tin bottle, he rose impatiently, shaking the bits of moss and heather from his kilt as though he meditated departure.

"Where are you going to?" said Kate, looking up, her eyes and mouth full of sweetness. "I really will talk to you now. I was just beginning to get a little stiff myself; I shall have needles and pins if I sit still a moment longer."

Muir's irritation subsided at once. He held out his hand to help her to her feet, and then stood for a moment gazing at her, as if he could not take his eyes away when once they had met hers. She answered the look of inquiry in his eyes:

"It was because you played the pipes so well," she half whispered. "I did not like to be so carried away by a tune."

Muir nodded. He understood the mixture of impulse and pride that had clashed, and brought about a strange perversity.

And so the sketch was abandoned, and they roamed over the hill looking for mosses and strange insects, and laughing over every discovery. Leaving the path, they strolled through an old grass-grown avenue of beeches, at the farther end of which stretched a kirkyard, sloping gently down till it reached the water's edge; the stones of the graves were battered and crusted with salt from the leaping spray of countless storms.

"Some day I shall be buried here in my turn," said Muir, a string of reluctance in his voice. "I shall listen to the waves at night and dream of you!"

But Kate seemed to think this an unfair appeal for sympathy, and merely replied sternly and wholesomely,

"What is the use of this? Let us go back to the hill. Grave time will be here soon enough without talking about it. And I have so enjoyed myself to-day. Don't spoil it! I should like to have a new experience every day," said Kate. "And to see new people every day?" Allan asked apprehensively.

"Yes, every day. And there are such heaps of delightful people I shall never meet. Since they have found out that there are people in Mars it makes me think there must be charming people there that I can never see, and that is so awful!"

Allan Muir had been following her like an obedient dog along a narrow sheep path, but now he strode quickly to her side, saying,-

"For my part I should never want to see any one again, if we walk together like this. I suppose you could never say the same? he repeated eagerly.

could always Could you?"

"No, I want to know every one it is possible to know, to see whom I like best; and even then I should feel there might be some one else I should like still betterI am sure I should!"

Muir only seemed to see the mocking curl of her lip he was too dazed to notice the smile in her eyes.

"Don't say that again," he almost shouted. "I cannot bear it!

"What do you mean?" She grew indignant in her turn. There was an edge in her voice, but her eyes grew gentle again as she caught sight of his averted face and knew him to be struggling with emotion. For the moment she had a double inclination to coax and to torment. She was very young and was thirsting for some deep emotion; she hardly knew what she was thinking of, or what she wanted.

"Will you retract what you said?" he asked again passionately. "If you will not I can never come into your presence again; it would make me wretched to see you." She was strongly moved to retract, but a love of having her own way come what might above all, the idea of sailing away and leaving him profoundly miserable on his beautiful peninsula, had a fascination for the elusive side of her that was hard to resist.

"No!" she said abruptly, "I will not retract. Ask the Nettle' what she thinks of it."

Muir was stung to the quick. He beat the heather with his stick with such violence that a tiny purple shower flew betore them.

"Never mind," continued Kate; "you have made the time pass very pleasantly so

far. But I may as well tell you that I like to elude people directly they begin to pin me down and make me promise this or that; I get restive, and I rather hate them.”

"You mean that you don't know what it is to care for any one," was the hoarse rejoinder. “Some day perhaps you will know what it means; I pray that you may know, and then you will be very sorry."

"Is that meant for a curse?" said Kate, with forced flippancy.

There was no answer.

The sketching materials were collected that day in silence, though with great care. and with Muir's customary charm of manner. The leave-taking in itself was stiff and uninteresting to all outward appearance, though deeply interesting to Kate, who looked very pale. As the boat left the pier she looked round, expecting to see a patient form watch her out of sight. To her surprise and slight consternation there was no one to be seen; she had half a mind to return to the pier, look for Allan and tell him she had not meant what she had said, but a shower of rain came on and with a shiver she tucked herself up in a corner of the cabin and gave herself up to remorse and plans for the future.

III.

THERE Was no more sketching on the hill. Kate Rothes waited for some sign from Dornochy before she would go back there, and the sign never came; days grew into weeks and she grew restless and anxious, but still there was no sign.

Not only so, but in a short time there was a rumour afloat that Muir was engaged to a distant neighbour of his own, the girl with the green eyes—“ the Nettle."

When Kate heard this she told herself that it was lucky she had not really allowed herself to care for him, for it would never have done for two peppery people to live together. But she wondered again and again how it was that a man could be so easily discouraged. She repeated to herself, with painful insistence, that it was very lucky she had not come to the point of caring for him. Meanwhile she became strangely indifferent to meeting people, and had forgotten all about Mars! Even at night, when she leant on the rails in front of the house to watch the beautiful flushed skies, as was her wont, there was no answering thrill in her heart. Something was over, somewhere the lights had been put out.

At last the whole question was settled unexpectedly, by a fresh report that thrilled and absorbed the country-side-that of the sudden illness and death of the Laird of Dornochy. In a very short space every one had a private version of the cause of so sad an event; one of these being to the effect that he died of poison, another that he had had brain fever, brought on by an unlucky speculation. Every tongue within miles wagged from morning till night over what was the saddest event that had taken place in the country for years. To think of a young fellow with such prospects before him, just about to be married-blessed with love, looks, and "siller "--and in the midst of it all to be relegated by ruthless fate to his six feet of earth in the kirkyard by the sea! The whole district wept and racked its brains as to what could have been the cause of his illness, but no one knew the exact state of the case—not even Kate, who thought she knew, nor the sour-faced butler, who remembered a day on the hill, and thought he knew. Allan Muir perhaps knew best, as he laid himself down with a will for his long dream by the sea. Indifference to life and neglected chills can work these things.

In October, when the air was growing chilly and the sunlight was bright and thin,