e of any
service; what was wanting was the sense to know what I should do. There
you had the advantage of me. And did you really bail the boat with your
bonnet?"

"Faith I did!" said Young Islay, laughing.

"I knew it," said Gilian. "I knew your feelings and your acts as well
as if it had been myself that had been there. I wish my comprehension of
the act to be done was as ready as my imagination. I wish--"

A shyness throttled the words in his mouth when he found all the company
looking upon him, all amused or a little pitiful except the dominie,
whose face had a kindly respect and curiosity, and Miss Mary, who was
looking wistfully in his eyes.

"There are two worlds about us," said Brooks; "the manifest, that is as
plain as a horn-book from A to Ampersand; the other, that is in the mind
of man, no iota less real, but we are few that venture into it further
than the lintel of the door." And he had about his eyes an almost
fatherly fondness for Gilian, who felt that in the words were some
justification for him, the dreamer.

The street was emptying, one by one the people had dispersed. Young
Islay's group broke up, and went their several ways. The Paymaster and
Miss Mary and Gilian went in to dinner.

"What's the matter with you, my dear?" whispered Miss Mary at the turn
of the stair when her brother had gone within.

"Matter?" said Gilian, surprised at her discovery. "Nothing that I know
of. What makes you think there is anything the matter with me?"

She stopped him at the stair-head, and here in the dusk of it she was
again the young companion. "Gilian, Gilian," said she, with stress in
her whisper and a great affection in the face of her. "Do you think I
can be deceived? You are ill; or something troubles you. What were you
eating?"

He laughed loudly; he could not help it at so prosaic a conclusion.

"What carry-on is that on the stair on a Lord's day?" cried the
Paymaster angrily and roughly from his room as he tugged short-tempered
at the buckle of his Sabbath stock.

"Then there's something bothering you, my dear," said Miss Mary again,
paying no heed to the interruption. And Gilian could not release his arm
from her restraint.

"Is there, Auntie?" said he. "Perhaps. And still I could not name it.
Come, come, what's the sense of querying a man upon his moods?"

"A man!" said Miss Mary.

"On the verge at least," said he, with a confidence he had never had in
his voice before, taking a full brea