she felt, ungrateful conduct, was happy; her whole sky was filling with light-she could have sang like a bird, and yet she had answered frowardly. It will come to rights somehow, she thought, and she went home gayer hearted than she had been for long.

CHAPTER XVII.

"Ye never spak a word, John,
My trusting heart to win;
But ye lied before the Lord, John,

And that was deeper sin.

Your hand lied seeking mine, John,

When naebody could see;

An' ye pressed it mony a time, John,
An' wasna that a lee."-ANON.

OR some months Gordon's vessel was lying
in the Roads, and he going back and

forward to Grey Craigs; and these, notwithstanding the difference in the Den, had been strangely enchanted months to Effie, with words floating in upon her half-dreaming senses, scraps of conversation, attitudes, looks of which she was scarcely aware at the time, but afterwards rose up before her, and would remain when their sunshine has passed away.

Still the time had not been altogether unmingled pleasure. All day she went about her household duties waging a constant battle within herself; sometimes doubting if Davie cared aught for her, and again thinking he was too far above her-she

feeling in the humility of deep and true affection that she was not worthy of him. Then, as the evening drew near and he came not as wont, though she never stood looking out of door or window to see if he were coming; hardly conscious, her whole life was a watch and wait; when the long summer twilight faded away, and the dews grew chill, a dull soreness gathered and spread about her heart, everybody else that could come, came startling her with successive shocks of certainty or disappointment, and she avoided with marvellous ingenuity any place or walk or visit that should fill up the twilight hours; then the joy when he arrived and joined the circle by the ruddy firelight, with the eye ever watching her movements. These were happy days, and she scarcely noticed them at the time, for, when we look back, we find happiness to have been a calm visitant, coming mostly in serene days, and among scenes and people where we did not look for it, and did not then recognise it to be such till after it was gone, and then we discover we had not the thing itself, only its semblance.

But as the course of true love never yet ran smooth," Davie and Effie were not exempt from the common lot; they too had their trials and difficulties. Davie, man-like, was jealous and exacting, and flirted with all the pretty girls to try Effie, and she as determinedly strove to conceal her feelings and to pre

serve an air of the most unruffled serenity, as if she cared not where he went, or with whom he laughed and joked. One good thing, Harvey had left to join his regiment, so he was no longer in the way to complicate matters; still Davie had other sources of annoyance. If the young people were watching from the quay for his boat in the evenings, he turned away disappointed and unhappy because Effie alone was absent, and her face was the only one he cared to see; and yet had he known she had been gazing for him more ardently than them all, and when others had forgotten him or were wearied looking, she had strained her eyes over the waters, sometimes it might be mistaking the wings of the sea-gull for his white sail, at other times deceived for a moment by the foam of a breaker; and she had only disappeared into the house when he might have detected her upon the shore. Ay, and had Davie seen, too, sometimes the weary look in her eyes, he would have been satisfied. She seemed like one who for many days and weeks had borne on her heart-not a heavy load that is easier to bear, but a restless struggle, sometimes joy, sometimes pain, doubt, fear, expectation, wild longing, followed by blank endurance; it was now she had learned the meaning of those bitter, bitter, dreary words, "The hope deferred that maketh the heart sick."

It is the last evening that Davie will spend for

many months at Grey Craigs, for his vessel was loaded, and he must sail before another sun is set. The summer had been and gone, and September was come with its long rich twilights-that month when fields of yellow grain are full of busy workpeople, or when, from the rich black earth, with its fresh odour, the ripe potato harvest is being gathered, and the breeze, as it blows past keen and cool, bears on it a flavour of the salt sea, tempered by the bright autumnal sun which shines unclouded in the blue heavens.

"How is it that after a', Effie," asks Jessie Grieve, as she stepped into the smith's cottage that afternoon, "how hae ye let Davie Gordon past ye? for he is to be married, they say, to Miss Mimie Brown-at least so her friends are telling. I aye said you would drive him away, you were sae saucy to him."

Lucky it was for Effie that Jessie Grieve was engaged untying her bundle, and she did not notice the deadly pallor that overspread her face; but this was but for a moment; soon her pride coming to her aid she conquered herself, and answered in a firm and seemingly unconcerned voice—

"I thought your auntie had read my fortune different."

"Weel, I canna understand it," said her friend; "I never saw her wrang before. An' to think o'