started off, saying, "There's Gowrie's horn sounding; I must away and
gather home the kye." And he darted off across the hillocks in search of
his scattered charges, giving a succession of whoops and shrieks as he
brandished his cudgel and whirled about in the discharge of his duty,
quite ignoring Grace, who still stood on the stepping-stones, feeling
rather sorry that the interview had terminated so abruptly, for she
remembered a great many questions she would like to have asked.

Presently Geordie, by dint of his exertions, managed to arrange the
cattle, with the formidable Blackie in front, in quite an orderly
procession, and he now prepared to move towards the farm, whose white
gables were visible from the pasture. He never looked back at Grace, or
gave any parting sign of recognition of her presence, and she began to
fear that perhaps after all he might forget about her invitation and
fail to appear on Sunday.

"You won't forget to come to Kirklands on Sunday afternoon, Geordie?"
she called after him, trying to raise her voice above the noisy little
stream.

"Didna I say that I would come and bring Jean? and I aye keep my
trysts," he shouted back again, with a look of indignant astonishment
that she should have imagined him capable of forgetting or failing to
keep his promise; and then he trudged away cheerily, swinging his stick,
more full of the idea of this "tryst" than Grace could guess, though his
mind dwelt chiefly on the thought of what a grand thing it would be for
little Jean to get a chance of learning to read. He was painfully
conscious that he had signally failed in his attempts to teach her, and
he was the only teacher she had ever had.

In this little, unkempt, sun-bleached herd-boy there dwelt a very
tender, chivalrous heart, and on his little sister Jean all his wealth,
of affection had as yet been bestowed. Never did faithful knight serve
his lady-love more devotedly than Geordie had this little brown maiden,
since her earliest babyhood.

They were orphans, and ever since they could remember their home had
been with their grandmother, a frail, dreamy old woman, so deaf that the
most active and varied gesticulation was the only means of conveying to
her the remotest idea of what one wished to say. Geordie, indeed, was
the only person sufficiently careless of his lungs to attempt the medium
of speech, and then his conversation was pitched in the same key as when
he performed his herding functio