ponse.

The rider was plainly one who had more to do with affairs bucolic than
with those of cities or courts, but withal a man of conscious dignity,
socially afloat, and able to hold his own.

"What the devil--," he cried--for nothing is so irritating to a
horseman as to come near losing his seat, except perhaps to lose it
altogether, and indignation against the cause of an untoward accident
is generally a mortal's first consciousness thereupon: however
foolishly, he feels himself injured. But there, having better taken in
Donal's look, he checked himself.

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Donal. "It was foolish of me to show
myself so suddenly; I might have thought it would startle most horses.
I was too absorbed to have my wits about me."

The gentleman lifted his hat.

"I beg your pardon in return," he said with a smile which cleared every
cloud from his face. "I took you for some one who had no business here;
but I imagine you are the tutor at the castle, with as good a right as
I have myself."

"You guess well, sir."

"Pardon me that I forget your name."

"My name is Donal Grant," returned Donal, with an accent on the my
intending a wish to know in return that of the speaker.

"I am a Graeme," answered the other, "one of the clan, and factor to
the earl. Come and see where I live. My sister will be glad to make
your acquaintance. We lead rather a lonely life here, and don't see
too many agreeable people."

"You call this lonely, do you!" said Donal thoughtfully. "--It is a
grand place, anyhow!"

"You are right--as you see it now. But wait till winter! Then perhaps
you will change your impression a little."

"Pardon me if I doubt whether you know what winter can be so well as I
do. This east coast is by all accounts a bitter place, but I fancy it
is only upon a great hill-side you can know the heart and soul of a
snow-blast."

"I yield that," returned Mr. Graeme. "--It is bitter enough here
though, and a mercy we can keep warm in-doors."

"Which is often more than we shepherd-folk can do," said Donal.

Mr. Graeme used to say afterwards he was never so immediately taken
with a man. It was one of the charms of Donal's habit of being, that
he never spoke as if he belonged to any other than the class in which
he had been born and brought up. This came partly of pride in his
father and mother, partly of inborn dignity, and partly of religion.
To him the story of our Lord was the reality it is,