s a child again, and his little playmate had come
back, and the next he was a man and Isabel was the lady of romance.
And while he stood in this delightful daze someone came and took the
vision away; he thought it was Mary Lauchie, but was not sure. When
she had disappeared into the new house he awoke sufficiently to notice
that Monteith was standing at the door regarding him with twinkling
eyes, and for the second time that afternoon he blushed.

The crowd was beginning to gravitate towards the new house, and Scotty
soon found an excuse to enter also. It hadn't been a dream after all,
for she was there, sitting close by Kirsty, holding her hand, and
surrounded by the people who made up the more genteel portion of
society in the Oa and the Glen. A little space seemed to divide them
from the common crowd, and she sat, the recognised centre of the group.
Scotty noticed, too, that even Mrs. Cameron, the minister's wife,
treated the young lady with bland deference, quite unlike her manner of
kind condescension towards the MacDonald girls. As he watched the
graceful gestures and easy well-bred air of his late comrade, Scotty
was suddenly smitten with a sense of his own shortcomings; he was
rough, uncouth, awkward. Isabel belonged to a different sphere; she
was far removed from him and his people. It was the first time he had
realised the difference, and he felt it just at the moment that it
first had power to hurt him. He experienced a sudden return of the old
wild ambition that used to shake him in his childhood when Rory played
a warlike air. And then he wanted to slip out and go away from the
wedding feast and never see Isabel again. He glanced at her again, and
felt resentfully that she must surely be guilty of the sin of "pride,"
which so characterised the class to which she belonged.

But he had soon to change his mind. The blue eyes had been glancing
eagerly about the room, and as soon as they spied him their owner arose
and came crushing through the throng towards him. For though Scotty
was distrustful, Isabel's frank simplicity of nature had not changed in
her years of absence. Her happiest days had been spent in the Oa, and
her return to her old home with its sense of welcome and freedom meant
more to the lonely girl than he could realise. Practically she had
been brought up among the MacDonalds, and at heart she was one of them.

Scotty saw her approach in combined joy and embarrassment, and just as