y dear?'

'Mr. Falkirk, you should rather be anxious as to who will have
the last. But get me a fast horse, sir, and let me practise'--
and flitting away from the table and about the room Miss Hazel
sang--

' "The lady stude on the castle wa',
"Beheld baith date and down;
"Then she was ware of a host of men
"Came ryding towards the town.
"O see ye not, my merry men a',
"O see ye not what I see?
"Methinks I see a host of men:
"I marvel wha' they be." '

And thereupon, finding she had suddenly come rather close to
the subject, Miss Hazel dashed out of the room.

The day proved warm. The air, losing its morning dew and
freshness, moved listlessly about among the leaves; the sky
looked glassy; the cattle stood panting in the shade, or
mused, ankle deep, in the brooks; only the birds were
stirring.

With thought and action as elastic as theirs, the young
mistress of Chickaree prepared for her visit to the poor
woman; afraid neither of the hot sunbeams nor of certain white
undulations of cloud that just broke the line of the western
horizon. Mr. Falkirk had walked down to his cottage; there was
no one to counsel or hinder. And over the horses there was
small consultation needed; the only two nags found being a
young vixen of a black colt, and an intensely sedate horse of
no particular colour which Mrs. Bywank was accustomed to drive
to church. Relinquishing this respectable creature to Dingee,
Wych Hazel perched herself upon Vixen and set forth; walking
the colt now to keep by her little guide, but promising
herself a good trot on the way home.

The child had come to show her the way, and went in a
shuffling amble by the side of the colt's black legs. For a
good while they kept the road which had been travelled
yesterday; at last turned off to another which presently
became pleasantly shady. Woods closed it in, made it rather
lonely in fact, but nobody thought now of anything but the
grateful change. There were clouds which might hide the sun by
and by, but just now he was powerful and they were only
lifting their white heads stealthily in the west. At a rough
stile, beyond which a foot track led deeper into the wood, the
girl stopped.

'It's in here,' she said.

It was very clear that Vixen could not cross the stile. So her
young rider dismounted and looping up the heavy folds of her
riding skirt as best she might, disappeared from the eyes of
Dingee among the trees. Her dress was a pretty enough dress