f the
Inns, beholding this cobweb-headed youth continually coming through the
Arches and hanging expectant about the town-head, often the only figure
there in these hot silent days to give life to the empty scene. There is
a stone at Old Islay's corner that yet one may see worn with the feet of
Gilian, so often he stood there turning on his heel, lending a gaze to
the street where Nan might be, and another behind to the long road over
the bridge whence she must sometime come. Years after he would stop
again upon the blue slab and recall with a pensive pleasure those old
hours of expectation.

For days he loitered in vain, the wonder of the Inns and its
frequenters. Nan never appeared. To her father a letter had come; the
Duke had come up on the back of it; there had been long discourse and
a dram of claret wine in the parlour; the General came out when his
Grace's cantering horse had ceased its merry hollow sound upon the
dry road to Dhu Loch, and breathed fully like one relieved from an
oppression. Later Old Islay had come up, crabbed and snuffy, to glower
on Nan as he passed into the house behind her father, and come out anon
smiling and even joco with her, mentioning her by her Christian name
like the closest friend of the family. Then for reasons inscrutable her
father would have her constant in his sight, though it was only, as it
seemed, to pleasure an averted eye.

By-and-by Gilian turned his lucky flint one morning in a fortunate
inspiration, and had no sooner done so than he remembered a very
plausible excuse for going to a farm at the very head of Glen Shira. He
started forth with the certainty, somehow, that he should meet the lady
at last.

He had transacted his business and was on his way to the foot of the
glen when he came upon her at Boshang Gate. Her back was to him; she
was looking out to sea, leaning upon the bars as if she were a weary
prisoner.

She turned at the sound of his footstep, a stranger utterly to his eyes
and imagination, but not to his instinct, her hair bound, her apparel
mature and decorous, her demeanour womanly. And he had been looking all
the while for a little girl grown tall, with no external difference but
that!

She took an impulsive step towards him as he hesitated with his hand
dubious between his side and his bonnet, a pleasant, even an eager smile
upon her face.

"You are quite sure you are you?" she said, holding out her hand before
he had time to say a word. "For