land and Scotland."

"But we mustn't bring home books," Duncan urged.

"Never mind; you must do it by mistake. We must have a map, I tell you;
and if I've had the trouble of getting the letter, you can take the
trouble to get the map. Mind you do, now, or else I shan't tell you
anything about it. You can take it back in the afternoon. 'Tisn't
stealing."

No, nor disobedience, nor deceit, nor telling a lie, eh, Elsie?
Evidently Elsie did not stop to think of that any more than she had
stopped to consider whether she had any business to read that old letter
of her mother's when it fluttered out of the window.

They reached the cottage in good time. Robbie and their grandmother had
only just come downstairs. Mrs. MacDougall seemed to be in an unusually
pleasant temper this morning. "I'm glad you've hastened, my child," she
said to Elsie. "Sit down to the table, and get slicing that cucumber
I've just cut. It'll be more refreshing with some bread-and-butter and a
cup o' milk than the porridge, and a change too."

Duncan glanced at Elsie with a half shame-faced expression, as much as
to say, "Mother is kind, you see, when you're good. She's sorry you had
to be beaten last night." But Elsie only replied by a look of defiance,
as though to say, "That doesn't make up at all."

"Let's see: what's to-day?" Mrs. MacDougall continued, pleasantly, as
she poured out the milk into the children's cups. "Can it be the
thirty-first?"

"No, no, Meg; surely not," quavered the old grandmother, who, for
reasons of her own, wished to appear ignorant. Was it not to refresh her
failing memory about what happened just about this time of year, a long
while ago, that she had gone to her daughter's desk, and got out those
old faded letters? Mrs. MacDougall would not have minded her reading
them, but she would mind having them lost, for she was very methodical;
and besides, many of these letters were important ones, written by hands
long since folded in death.

"And to-morrow's Robbie's birthday," Mrs. MacDougall continued, laying
her rough, strong hand very gently on the child's fair curls. "Very well
do I remember this time seven years ago."

"Yes," sighed the old grandmother. "Poor little dears! and Nannie a
bonny lass too."

Mrs. MacDougall glanced at her mother with something like a frown. "I
never think of Robbie's birthday without thinking about poor Aunt
Nannie," she said to the children.

They knew well enough why, for they ha