ou have done her good already."

Of course Mr Stewart, being a minister, whose office it is to do good
to people, was very glad to have done good to Shenac. Perhaps he
thought it best to let _well_ alone, for he did not speak to her again
during tea-time, nor while she was gathering up the tea-things--"just as
she used to do in the old house long ago," he said to himself. She
washed them, too, there before them all; for it was Shenac Dhu's new
china--Christie More's beautiful wedding present--that had been spread
in honour of the occasion, and it was not to be thought of that they
should be carried into the kitchen to be washed like common dishes. She
was quiet, as usual, all the evening and at the time of worship, when
Angus Dhu and his wife and Evan and some other neighbours, having heard
of the minister's arrival, came in. She was just as usual, they all
said, only she did not sing. If she had raised her voice in her
brother's favourite psalm,--

"I to the hills will lift mine eyes,"

she must have cried again; and she was afraid of the tears which it
seemed impossible to stop when once they found a way.

Mr Stewart fully intended for that night to "let well alone." Shenac
had welcomed him warmly as the dearest friend of her dead brother, and
he would be content for the present with that. He had something to say
to her, and a question or two to ask; but he must wait a while, he
thought. She must not be disturbed yet.

But when the neighbours were gone, and he found himself alone with her
for a moment, he felt sorely tempted to change his mind. As he watched
her sitting there with folded hands, so quiet and grave and sweet, so
unconscious of his presence, as it seemed to him, a fear came over him--
a fear as to the answer his question might receive. It was not at all a
pleasant state of mind. He endured it only while he walked up and down
the room two or three times; then pausing beside her, he said softly,--

"Is this my Shenac?"

She looked up with only wonder in her eyes, he saw, with a little shock
of pain; but he went on,--

"Hamish gave his sister to me, to keep and cherish always. Did he never
tell you?"

"I do not understand you, Mr Stewart," said Shenac; but the sudden
drooping of the eye and the rush of colour over her face seemed to say
something else.

"To be my wife," he said, sitting down beside her and drawing her gently
towards him. She did not resist, but she said hastily,--