ing to look at it with absent eyes she put her mittened
hand into the pocket of her silk gown, produced a large peppermint
lozenge, and passed it into his hand.

This long unaccustomed courtesy found him awkwardly unprepared, and his
fingers not closing quickly enough on the sweet it fell on the floor.
It rolled with an alarming noise far to the left, and stirred the
congregation like a trumpet. Though little movement showed it, every
eye was on the pew from which this disturbance came, and Miss Mary
and Gilian knew it. Miss Mary did not flinch; she kept a steadfast eye
straight in front of her, but to those behind her the sudden colour of
her neck betrayed her culpability. Gilian was wretched, all the more
because he heard a rustle of the skirts behind in Turner's pew, and his
imagination saw Miss Nan suppressing her laughter with shaking hair and
quite conscious that he had been the object of Miss Mary's attention.
He felt the blood that rushed to his body must betray itself behind. All
the gowk in him came uppermost; he did not know what he was doing; he
put the Bible awkwardly on the book-board in front of him, and it,
too, slid to the floor with a noise even more alarming than that of the
rolling sweet.

The Paymaster, clearing his throat harshly, wakened from a dover to
the fact that these disturbances were in his own territory, and saw the
lad's confusion. If that had not informed him the mischievous smile of
Young Islay in Gilian's direction would have done so. He half turned his
face to Gilian, and with shut lips whispered angrily:

"Thumbs! thumbs!" he said. "God forgive you for a gomeral!" And then he
stared very sternly at Rixa, who saw the movement of the swollen
neck above the 'kerchief, knew that the Paymaster was administering
a reproof, and was comforted exceedingly by this prelude to the day's
devotions.

Gilian left the book where it lay to conceal from those behind that he
had been the delinquent. But he felt, at the same time, he was detected.
What a contrast the lady behind must find in his gawkiness compared with
the correct and composed deportment of the Capital she had come from! He
must be the rustic indeed to her, handling lollipops yet like a child,
and tumbling books in a child's confusion. As if to give more acuteness
to his picture of himself he saw a foil in Young Islay so trim and
manly in the uniform old custom demanded for the Sunday parade, a shrewd
upward tilt of the chin and low