resolved to subject the Miss Wishart whose
name came last on their host's tongue to a friendly criticism.
Meanwhile they held their peace on the matter like wise men.

"What a strange name Egeria is!" said Arthur. "Very," said Lewis; "but
you know the story. My respectable aunt's father had a large family of
girls, and being of a classical turn of mind he called them after the
Muses. The Muses held out for nine, but for the tenth and youngest he
found himself in a difficulty. So he tried another tack and called the
child after the nymph Egeria. It sounds outlandish, but I prefer it to
Terpsichore."

Thereafter they lit pipes, and, with the gravity which is due to a great
subject, inspected their friend's rods and guns.

"I see no memorials of your travels, Lewie," said Arthur. "You must
have brought back no end of things, and most people like to stick them
round as a remembrance."

"I have got a roomful if you want to see them," said The traveller; "but
I don't see the point of spoiling a moorland place with foreign odds and
ends. I like homely and native things about me when I am in Scotland."

"You're a sentimentalist, old man," said his friend; and George, who
heard only the last word, assumed that Arthur had then and there
divulged his suspicions, and favoured that gentleman with a wild frown
of disapproval.

As Lewis sat on the edge of the Etterick burn and looked over the
shining spaces of morning, forgetful of his friends, forgetful of his
past, his mind was full of a new turmoil of feeling. Alice Wishart had
begun to claim a surprising portion of his thoughts. He told himself a
thousand times that he was not in love--that he should never be in love,
being destined for other things; that he liked the girl as he liked any
fresh young creature in the morning of life, with youth's beauty and the
grace of innocence. But insensibly his everyday reflections began to be
coloured by her presence. "What would she think of this?" "How that
would please her!" were sentences spoken often by the tongue of his
fancy. He found charm in her presence after his bachelor solitude; her
demure gravity pleased him; but that he should be led bond-slave by
love--that was a matter he valiantly denied.

II

The sheepfolds of Etterick lie in a little fold of glen some two miles
from the dwelling, where the heathy tableland, known all over the glen
as "The Muirs," relieves the monotony of precipitous hills. On this day
it