he glen at the same point exactly. Perhaps he
had a spy-glass, too!"

What Louis noticed most of all was the pretty shape of Patsy's small
head, the dense quavering blackness of the little curls that frothed
about her brow, and the sidelong way she had of appealing to the giant
who bent over her with his finger on the line of Virgil he was
expounding.

Presently with a squaring of the shoulders and a grasp at the blue
bonnet which lifted it clear of his head, the Poor Scholar strode away.
He crossed the Abbey Burn in a couple of leaps, his feet hardly seeming
to touch the stones, and in a moment more his tall figure was hoisting
itself up the opposite bank, his hands grasping rock and tree-trunk,
root and dry bent-grass indiscriminately, till presently, without once
turning round, he was out of sight.

Louis Raincy detached himself from the rock by which he had stood silent
during the interview with the Poor Scholar. He swung himself lightly up
into the Y-shaped crotch of a willow that overhung the big pool.

The girl came along, her lips moving as she repeated the words of the
passage she had just had explained. Then Louis Raincy whistled an air
well known to both of them, "Can ye sew cushions, can ye sew sheets?"

Instantly the girl looked up, turning a vivid, scarlet-lipped face,
crowned with a ripple of ink-black locks, to the notch of the willow,
and said easily, "Hillo, Louis Raincy! What are you doing here, a mile
off your own ground?"

"Watching you turn the head of that poor boy Francis Airie!"

"His head will not turn so easy as yours, Louis, lad," Patsy retorted;
"there is a deal more in it!"

Louis Raincy was not in any way put out. Of course Patsy was different.
You never knew in the least what she was going to say, and it would have
grieved him exceedingly not to be abused. He would have been sure,
either that the girl was sickening for a serious illness, or that he had
mortally offended her.

"How did you leave the Wise Uncle this morning?" he asked, with a nod of
his head in the direction of the house by the Abbey Burnfoot. Both had
begun to climb a little way up out of the path by the waterside. They
did so without any words. It was the regular order of things, as they
both knew. For in the valley bottom Uncle Julian or Adam Ferris might
come round the corner upon them in a moment, and being young, they
wanted to talk without restraint. Besides, there was a constant coming
and going of messen