hen--wait for
Patsy!"

What Louis Raincy meant was that he would find a place equally sheltered
from the eyes of his grandfather and from possible spies in the front
windows of Cairn Ferris, the quiet ivy-grown house at the head of the
glen, against which his grandfather had hurled so many anathemas in
vain.

At last he found his place--a chosen nook. The sound of voices would be
drowned by the splash of the little waterfall. The pool into which it
fell was deep enough to keep any one from breaking in upon them too
suddenly, and through a rift in the leaves a piece of bluest sky peered
down. White of waterfall, sleepy brown of pool, dusky under an eyelash
of bracken, and blue of sky--Patsy, who noticed all things, would like
that.

But Patsy did not come. Could she have passed and he not seen? Clearly
not, for Louis had come downhill as fast as a big boulder set a-rolling.
What, then, could she be doing?

Ah, who could ever tell what Patsy might be doing or call her to account
afterwards for the deed? Louis only knew that he dared not even try. All
the same he left his nook with some disrelish--it would have been so
capital a conjuncture to have met her just there, and he had taken such
pains! However, there was no choice. He must go to seek Patsy if Patsy
would not come to him.

She was returning from her daily lesson at her uncle Julian's. He knew
that she would most likely have a book under her arm, and an ashplant in
her hand. She would come along quietly, whistling low to herself,
tickling the tails of the trout in the shallows with her stick and
laughing aloud as they scudded away into the Vandyke-brown shadows of
the bank.

The glen opened out a little and Louis paused at the corner, standing
still in shadow.

Twenty yards away Patsy was talking to a young man in a shabby grey
suit, a broad blue bonnet set on his head, and they were conferring
profoundly over a book which Patsy held in her hands. The young man in
the shabby suit appeared to be instructing Patsy, or at least explaining
a difficult passage, which he did with more zeal and gusto than Louis
cared about.

He knew him in a moment, for of course the heir of Raincy knew everybody
within thirty miles.

"Only Frank Airie, the Poor Scholar!" he said to himself, his jealousy
melting like a summer cloud, "of course--what a fool I was. He's on his
way home from teaching the Auchenmore brats. Though it is a miracle that
he should happen to cross t