ssibly mean what he makes of it--notwithstanding the risk, he
resolved to hold himself ready, and if anything was given him, to cry
it out and not spare. Nor had he long resolved ere the opportunity came.

It had come to be known that Donal frequented the old avenue, and it
was with intent, in the pride of her acquaintance with scripture, and
her power to use it, that Miss Carmichael one afternoon led her
unwilling, rather recusant, and very unhappy disciple thither: she
sought an encounter with him: his insolence towards the old-established
faith must be confounded, his obnoxious influence on Arctura
frustrated! It was a bright autumnal day. The trees were sorely
bereaved, but some foliage yet hung in thin yellow clouds upon their
patient boughs. There was plenty of what Davie called scushlin, that is
the noise of walking with scarce lifted feet amongst the thick-lying
withered leaves. But less foliage means more sunlight.

Donal was sauntering along, his book in his hand, now and then reading
a little, now and then looking up to the half-bared branches, now and
then, like Davie, sweeping a cloud of the fallen multitude before him.
He was in this childish act when, looking up, he saw the two ladies
approaching; he did not see the peculiar glance Miss Carmichael threw
her companion: "Behold your prophet!" it said. He would have passed
with lifted bonnet, but Miss Carmichael stopped, smiling: her smile was
bright because it showed her good teeth, but was not pleasant because
it showed nothing else.

"Glorying over the fallen, Mr. Grant?" she said.

Donal in his turn smiled.

"That is not Mr. Grant's way," said Arctura, "--so far at least as I
have known him!"

"How careless the trees are of their poor children!" said Miss
Carmichael, affecting sympathy for the leaves.

"Pardon me," said Donal, "if I grudge them your pity: there is nothing
more of children in those leaves than there is in the hair that falls
on the barber's floor."

"It is not very gracious to pull a lady up so sharply!" returned Miss
Carmichael, still smiling: "I spoke poetically."

"There is no poetry in what is not true," rejoined Donal. "Those are
not the children of the tree."

"Of course," said Miss Carmichael, a little surprised to find their
foils crossed already, "a tree has no children! but--"

"A tree no children!" exclaimed Donal. "What then are all those
beech-nuts under the leaves? Are they not the children of the tree?"

"Yes