turned
from her contemptuously.

"I think I am, papa," she sobbed. "Don't mind me. Let me go away,
and I will never trouble you any more." She would go to the
mountain, she thought, and be a shepherdess with Gibbie.

Her father took her roughly by the arm, pushed her into a closet,
locked the door, went and had his luncheon, and in the afternoon,
having borrowed Snowball, took her just as she was, drove to meet
the mail coach, and in the middle of the night was set down with her
at the principal hotel in the city, whence the next morning he set
out early to find a school where he might leave her and his
responsibility with her.

When Gibbie knew himself beyond the hearing of Ginevra, his song
died away, and he went home sad. The gentle girl had stepped at
once from the day into the dark, and he was troubled for her. But
he remembered that she had another father besides the laird, and
comforted himself.

When he reached home, he found his mother in serious talk with a
stranger. The tears were in her eyes, and had been running down her
cheeks, but she was calm and dignified as usual.

"Here he comes!" she said as he entered. "The will o' the Lord be
dene--noo an' for ever-mair! I'm at his biddin'.--An' sae's
Gibbie."

It was Mr. Sclater. The witch had sailed her brander well.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

DAUR STREET.

One bright afternoon, towards the close of the autumn, the sun
shining straight down one of the wide clean stony streets of the
city, with a warmth which he had not been able to impart to the air,
a company of school-girls, two and two in long file, mostly with
innocent, and, for human beings, rather uninteresting faces, was
walking in orderly manner, a female grenadier at its head, along the
pavement, more than usually composed, from having the sun in their
eyes. Amongst the faces was one very different from the rest, a
countenance almost solemn and a little sad, of still, regular
features, in the eyes of which by loving eyes might have been read
uneasy thought patiently carried, and the lack of some essential to
conscious well-being. The other girls were looking on this side and
that, eager to catch sight of anything to trouble the monotony of
the daily walk; but the eyes of this one were cast down, except when
occasionally lifted in answer to words of the schoolmistress, the
grenadier, by whose side she was walking. They were lovely brown
eyes, trustful and sweet, and although, as I h