the only three in the shire, and Colin--a Cornal--and both of Keils. The
Sheriff's lady might leave me out of her routs if she pleasured it, but
she has no cause to put my brothers to an insult like this." She said
"my brothers" with a high hard sound of stern and proud possession that
was very fine to hear. Even Gilian, as yet only beginning to know the
love and pride of this little woman, had, at her accent, a sudden deep
revealing of her devoted heart.

"It is the Turners' doing," she said, feverishly rubbing a warming pan
whose carved lid from Zaandam blinked and gleamed like the shining face
of a Dutch skipper over his dram. "I know them; because my brother
must be quarrelling with them, their half-sister must be taking up the
quarrel and shutting her door in our faces."

"The Turners! Then I hate them too," cried Gilian, won to the
Paymaster's side by the sorrow of Miss Mary.

"Oh, you must not say that, my dear," she cried, appalled. "It is not
your affair at all, and the Turners are not to blame because the Sheriff
is under the thumb of his madam. The Turners have their good points as
well as the rest of us, and--"

"They have a daughter," said Gilian, almost unconsciously, for there had
come flooding into his mind a vision of the sombre vessel's cabin, shot
over by a ray of sunshine, wherein a fairy sang of love and wandering.
And then he regretted he had spoke of hate for any of her name, for
surely (he thought) there should be no hate in the world for any that
had her blood and shared her home.

Surely in her people, knowing her so warm, so lovely, so kind, so
gifted, there could be no cruelty and wrong.

"I would not say I hated any one if I were you, my dear," said Miss
Mary; "but I would keep a cool side to the Turners, father, or daughter,
or son. Their daughter that you speak of was the cause of this new
quarrel. The Captain miscalled her to her father, which was not right,
for indeed she's a bonny lassie, and they tell me she sings--"

"Like the mavis,9' cried Gilian, still in his Gaelic and in a transport
of recollection.

"Where did you hear her?" asked Miss Mary.

Gilian, flushed and uneasy, told her of the performance in the ship.
Finding a listener neither inattentive nor without sympathy, he went
further still and told of the song's effect upon him, and that the
sweetness of it still abiding made his hatred of her people impossible.

"She'll do for looks too," said Miss Mary. "She tak