have to say to me?"

"We shall be friends always, I hope."

"Friends! No. We have got past that. It must be all or nothing
between us. You must see that."

She looked at him with wet, appealing eyes.

"It cannot be all," said she, speaking low.

John turned and went away without a word.

That was not the very last between them. John came in the morning in
time to carry Marjorie to the carriage, and to place her in Allison's
arms. Something was said about letters, and Marjorie exclaimed:

"Oh! Allison, will it not be fine to get letters from Robin and John?"

John looked up to see the tears in Allison's sad eyes, and his own
softened as he looked.

"Good-bye, my friend," said she. "Good-bye."

Even if he had wished he could not have refused to take her hand this
time, with Marjorie and Robin looking on. But he did not utter a word,
and in a moment they were gone.

John stood on the pavement looking after the carriage till it
disappeared around a corner of the street, "And now," said he, "I must
to my work again."

CHAPTER TWENTY.

"Will I like a fule, quo' he,
For a haughty hizzie dee?"

There was work enough waiting him, if he were to carry out the plans he
had pleased himself with making, before ever he had seen the face of
Allison Bain. In one year more he had hoped to get to the end of his
university course. If not in one year, then in two. After that, the
world was before him and hard work.

"It has happened well," he was saying to himself, as he still stood
looking at the corner of the street. "Yes, it has happened well. I am
glad she is gone away. If she had been staying on in Nethermuir, it
might not have been so easy for me to put her out of my thoughts. It
has happened well."

And then he turned and went down the street "with his nose in the air,"
as was said by a humble friend of his who saw him, but whom he did not
see.

"I must have my turn of folly like the lave (the rest), as auld Crombie
would say. And `it's weel over,' as he would also say, if he kenned
all. I must to my work again."

Then he turned the corner and came face to face with the husband of
Allison Bain. John's impulse during the space of one long-drawn breath
was to knock the man down and trample him under his feet. Instead of
this, in answer to Brownrig's astonished question, "Have you forgotten
me?" John met his extended hand and stammered:

"I did not expect to see you. And for the m