id it on the ashes of the fire, covering it all over
with the hot, silver ash.

"HOW dirty!" said Nell, elevating her pretty little nose.

But when it was cooked, and Mr. Gillet lifted it up and dusted the
ash away--lo! it was high and light and beautifully white.

So they ate it, and took mental marginal notes to make it in the
paddocks at Misrule for each and every picnic to come.

They piled up two plates of good things and put in the brown man's
cupboard, and Mr. Gillet laid his unread English papers on the chair
near the cat.

"That 'Telegraph' is a month old," he said deprecatingly seeing Meg
smile upon him her first smile that day.

CHAPTER XIX

A Pale-Blue Hair Ribbon

She in her virginal beauty
As pure as a pictured saint,
How should this sinning and sorrow
Have for her danger or taint?

The reason our sweet pale Margaret had been reluctant of her smiles
was on account of the very man who alone missed them.

Quite a warm friendship had sprung up during the month between the
little fair-faced girl, who looked with such serene blue eyes to a
future she felt must be beautiful, and the world-worn man, who looked
back to a past all blackened and unlovely by his own acts.

He rode with the two girls every-day, because Mrs. Hassal did not
like them going long distances alone; and, seeing Judy seldom walked
her horse, and Meg's steed had not a canter in it, it fell out that
he kept beside the slow and timid rider all the time.

"You remind me of a little sister I had who died," he said slowly to
Meg once, after a long talk. "Perhaps if she were alive now I should
not be quite so contemptible."

Meg's face flushed scarlet, and a shamed look had come into her eyes.
It seemed altogether terrible to her that he should know she knew of
his failing.

"Perhaps it makes her sorry now," she said in a whisper he scarcely
heard, and then she grew pale at her boldness, and rode on a little
way to hide her distressed looks.

On the way home the pale-blue ribbon, that tied the strands of her
sunny plait together, blew off. He dismounted and picked it up.
Meg stretched out her hand for it, but he untied the bow and folded
it slowly round his big hand.

"May I keep it?" he said in a low voice. "For my blue ribbon?
I know the conditions that attach."

"If you would--oh, if you would!" Meg breathed rather than said.
Then Judy galloped up and they rode home three abreast. It was
such h