pleased my papa so much. I
know when he is pleased, though he does not speak of it; and it is not
often he will be so much pleased."

"And you, Sheila?" said the young man, unconscious of the familiarity he
was using, and only remembering that she had scarcely thanked him for
the other sketch.

"Well, there is nothing that will please me so much as to see him
pleased," she said with a smile.

He was about to open the door for her, but he kept his hand on the
handle, and said, earnestly enough, "But that is such a small matter--an
hour's work. If you only knew how gladly I would live all my life here
if only I could do you some greater service--"

She looked a little surprised, and then for one brief second reflected.
English was not wholly familiar to her: perhaps she had failed to catch
what he really meant. But at all events she said gravely and simply,
"You would soon tire of living here: it is not always a holiday." And
then, without lifting her eyes to his face, she turned to the door, and
he opened it for her and she was gone.

It was about ten o'clock when they went outside for their evening
stroll, and all the world had grown enchanted since they had seen it in
the colors of the sunset. There was no night, but a strange clearness
over the sky and the earth, and down in the south the moon was rising
over the Barvas hills. In the dark green meadows the cattle were still
grazing. Voices of children could be heard in the far distance, with the
rumble of a cart coming through the silence, and the murmur of the
streams flowing down to the loch. The loch itself lay like a line of
dusky yellow in a darkened hollow near the sea, having caught on its
surface the pale glow of the northern heavens, where the sun had gone
down hours before. The air was warm and yet fresh with the odors of the
Atlantic, and there was a scent of Dutch clover coming across from the
sandy pastures nearer the coast. The huts of the small hamlet could but
faintly be made out beyond the dark and low-lying pastures, but a long,
pale line of blue smoke lay in the motionless air, and the voices of the
children told of open doors. Night after night this same picture, with
slight variations of position, had been placed before the stranger who
had come to view these solitudes, and night after night it seemed to him
to grow more beautiful. He could put down on paper the outlines of an
every-day landscape, and give them a dash of brilliant color to lo