ley himself with solemn eyes. "But there
is content here, and every hearth there would make you welcome if it was
only for your name, even if the world was against you."

She saw the reapers in the fields, heard their shearing songs that are
sung for cheer, but somehow in this land are all imbued with melancholy.
Loud, loud against that sorrow of the brooding glen rose up in her
remembrance the thoughtless clamour of the lowland world, and she
shivered, as one who looks from the window of a well-warmed room upon
a night of storm. Her father put an arm about her waist. "Is it not
homely?" said he, dreading her reply. "I can bear it--with you," she
answered pitifully. "But if you go abroad, it would kill me. I must have
something that is not here; I must have youth and life--and--life."

"At your age I would not have given Maam and the glen about it for my
share of Paradise."--"But now?" said she.

He turned hastily from the window and nervously paced the room.

"No matter about me," he answered in a little. "Ah! you're your mother's
child. I wish--I wish I could leave you content here." He felt at
his chin with a nervous hand, muttered, looked on her askance, pitied
himself that when he went wandering he must not have the consoling
thought that she was safe and happy in her childhood's home.

"I wish I had never sent you away," he said. "You would have been more
content to-day. But that's the manner of the world, we must pay our way
as we go, in inns and in knowledge."

She ran up with tripping feet and kissed him rapturously.

"No lowland tricks!" he cried, pleased and yet ashamed at a display
unusual in these parts. "Fancy if some one saw you!"

"Then let them look well again," she said, laughingly defiant, and he
had to stoop to avoid the assault of her ripe and laughing lips. The
little struggle had brought a flame to her eye that grew large and
lambent; where her lower neck showed in a chink of her kerchief-souffle
it throbbed and glowed. The General found himself wondering if this was,
indeed, his: child, the child he had but the other day held in the crook
of his arm and dandled on his knee.

"I wish," said he again, while she neatly tied the knot upon his queue,
"I wish we had a husband for you, good or--indifferent, before I go."

"Not indifferent, father," she laughed. "Surely the best would not be
too good for your daughter! As if I wanted a husband of any kind!"

"True, true," he answered thoughtfu