he swept his glance down
the long table until it rested on Laura Waynefleet's face. She felt
the blood creep into her cheeks, for she knew what he meant, but she
looked at him steadily, and her eyes were shining. Then he spread his
hands out.

"I felt I daren't shame boys of that kind," he said, and hastily sat
down.

His observations were certainly somewhat crude, but the little quiver
in his voice got hold of those who heard him, and once more the big
building rang with cheering. As the sound of hearty acclamation died
away there was a great clatter of thrust-back benches through which
the tuning of a fiddle broke. Then out of the tentative twang of
strings rose, clear and silvery, the lament of Flora Macdonald,
thrilling with melancholy, and there were men and women there whose
hearts went back to the other wild and misty land of rock and pine and
frothing river which they had left far away across the sea. It may be
that the musician desired a contrast, or that he was merely feeling
for command of the instrument, for the plaintive melody that ran from
shift to shift into a thin elfin wailing far up the sobbing strings
broke off suddenly, and was followed by the crisp jar of crashing
chords. Then "The Flowers of Edinburgh" rang out with Caledonian verve
in it and a mad seductive swing, and the guests streamed out to the
middle of the floor. That they had just eaten an excellent supper was
a matter of no account with them.

Nasmyth, in the meanwhile, elbowed his way through the crowd of
dancers until he stood at Laura's side, and as he looked at her, there
was a trace of embarrassment in his manner. She wore his lace, but
until that moment her attire had never suggested the station to which
she had been born. Now she seemed to have stepped, fresh and
immaculate, untouched by toil, out of the world to which he had once
belonged. She was, for that night at least, no longer an impoverished
rancher's daughter, but a lady of station. With a twinkle in his eyes,
he made her a little formal inclination, and she, knowing what he was
thinking, answered with an old-world curtsey, after which a grinning
ox-teamster of habitant extraction turned and clapped Nasmyth's
shoulder approvingly.

"V'la la belle chose!" he said. "Mamselle Laura is altogether
ravissante. Me, I dance with no one else if she look at me like dat."

Then Nasmyth and Laura laughed, and glided into the dance, though, in
the case of most of their companio