"And there is not the slightest feeling of annoyance in your mind on the matterno latent feeling of irritation?" queried Mr. Price with pathetic emphasis.

Rex answered with a laugh:

"Not the ghost of such a thing. My dear fellow, if I wanted ever so much to make a row over it, I couldn't for the life of me get the steam up.'

As he spoke, his eyes wandered down the garden-path to where Clare and Madge were coming in through the orchard-gate with big bunches of wallflowers and daffodils in their hands.

The girls appeared to have been going through a feminine counterpart of the interview of the two men.

"It wasn't honest, it wasn't right," Madge was saying as they came up the garden.

"But, you know, I was not really sure Mr. Price cared for me," Clare was saying pleadingly; "and you've no idea how dull it was at the Dyke Farm. The Gunters are all babies under six-except the mother and father, of course-it would have been so miserable wandering about the fields and lanes all by myself."

"I don't care!" reiterated Madge. "It wasn't honest, and might have done no end of harm!"

"But I don't think it has," laughed Rex, hearing her last sentence, and guessing to what it referred. Then he held out his hand to Clare.

"I've just been told I may congratulate you, Miss Gunter. I'm sure I wish you every happiness."

If a week ago Rex had been told he would address such words as these with such calm indifference to Clare Gunter, he would have laughed the idea to scorn.

"I wonder if he wants to say anything else to her before they part," thought Madge. So she wandered back through the orchard-gate, in among the plum and apple trees, burying her face in her big nosegay as she went, for somehow her cheeks were hot, and the scent of the wallflowers seemed to cool and refresh them.

But Rex had evidently nothing more to say, for she had not gone ten steps along the orchard-path before he was by her side. "Where are you going?" he asked. "Are you looking for anything?"

It was no wonder he should ask that question. He had never seen Madge Burnside's eyes so downcast before.

"I'm looking for violets," she answered

readily enough. "Aunt Chris said the sweetest grew under these apple-trees."

Those violets, not a doubt, took a long time to find. Clare and Evan said their adieux to Aunt Chris, and set off on their homeward journey; the luncheon-bell rang once, twice; yet never a sign of Madge or Rex. Aunt Ju went looking for them in the picture-gallery; Aunt Chris put on a woollen hood, and went forth in search into the garden.

At the orchard-gate she came upon them walking towards the house, hand-in-hand, Madge looking very flushed and happy, Rex very conscious and proud.

"Aunt Chris," he said, speaking out boldly, "I've something to tell you-something that will give you a great deal of pleasure."

"My dear," and this with one of her most terrible frowns, "you may spare yourself the trouble. I know exactly what it is."

And somehow Madge felt very small when, as Aunt Chris took her by the hand and kissed her, she said:

"Ah, you young people, you think you wind up all the clocks in life, and keep all the wheels going, while your elders look on and do nothing. I dare say it is so-in novels and poetry, that is-but, believe me, in real life, as a rule, things are managed quite the other way."

AT THE GLEN'S FOOT.

CHAPTER I.

THE May Sun came sweeping from across the fair hilly island. The long, narrow, mountainous domain of the whilom Kings of Man was green and golden in the spring light golden_with sunshine and its own marvellous wealth of primroses; green with the newly-opened young leafage of its fields and fairy glens. Can any island match the glens of Man in early summer?

Nora Quayle, a Manx maiden of some years ago, was sauntering in most happy, easy, unburdened style along a bowery lane.

Her hands were full of the fair Manx primroses; her fingers broke some to pieces in the reckless over-abundance of her wealth; her arm carried a basket whose brown lid was half-open, propped up with the yellow beauties.

She was a tall, slight girl, with dark hair and with blue eyes; a girl with no

features to talk of if you want them described in classic order; nevertheless, they were features which were lightly and fairly moulded-go to Man and you will see many such a girl of the old Manx race, hailing, as one may say, from the dim past, when the Manx Kings knew they came from Ireland, over the way there.

Once upon a time, Nora and her people -had she only lived farther back in history than she did-might have had tough work to do in upholding the dignity of the sovereign of Man; as it was, she was quite a modern girl, and her people were simply Manx gentlefolk. The wars of Man were over long ago, and the island was only a busy, peaceful, thriving place. An advancing place, though, for was there not talk of a regular weekly steamer being started between Douglas and Liverpool?

Such news slipped in and out of the ears of Nora and her sisters; what did they want with steamers, or with England? They were Manx. If they married well, then their husbands might make the wedding-tour across the seas in England. So the girls might talk, but such talk was like the news of the new steamer-it came and slipped away.

Everything for them was on the island, or in the green, rolling seas, which played in giant grandeur in the summer-time, and in winter roared as only the Atlantic can roar against a rock-bound coast.

The years had run round, and Nora was a woman-seventeen. Meta Quayle was a year younger; Alice, the eldest, was a year and a half older. As Nora went along, she hummed a song then in vogue-one which had been the rage in England six months ago; but was new and "the thing" in Man this spring.

As Nora went, her musings fell upon things that had fallen about May-time. She and Meta had followed the ancient custom on May Eve, and they had made the customary little crosses of the kearn or rowan tree, and had set them up by the doors of the outhouses-if not, who could say what harm the fairies and the witches would not do? Alice and their father had caught the two over their work, and had laughed at them; they were not so foolish as to believe in such nonsense; and then, when they had just got rid of these torments, and were intent on smuggling a tiny cross under the untidy periwinkle, so that they should fix it against the front of the very house itself, who should come up but Johnny Denison !

Johnny Denison was soon to be Alice's husband-how could the girls let him see what they were doing?

So that little cross was flung away by Meta across the great tangled lawn, or field more properly, in front of the house, and they said no word to the young man about their little superstitions.

Nevertheless, Meta said:

"I don't like it, Nora; I tremble now I have thrown it away. Do you go indoors with this sweet youth, and I'll have a hunt for my cross. It's worse than neglect to treat them so. And why should all the folks think so much of the fairies if there are no such people, I'd like to know?" "It's done!" Nora answered decisively. But Meta had had her hunt, and unsuccessfully. Now Nora, weeks after, was thinking of that same business.

Now one knows how thoughts are brought into one's mind. Nothing of Nora's doing, that sweet fresh afternoon, had been of a sort to bring the old custom to her mind; nevertheless, she found herself, as she broke and scattered her primroses to the four winds, thinking-and thinking in a troubled way, of the scorn and contempt she and Meta had cast upon the tricksy people.

Do you know the Manx lanes? They are very often rough, and stony, and hilly. Such a one was Nora climbing. Lovely and beautiful for a poet or a painter, for its walls were of young ferns, banking up to the thick tangled greenery of an unkempt hedgerow; and its roof was of the light spring leafage of many elms and ashtrees; but below it might have been the bed of a mountain torrent.

It was a short cut from Glen Maye to the high-road. Nora had got her primroses, and ever since her babyhood her feet had clambered up and down that lane, so her thoughts fell quite away from it.

Things had been going on so brilliantly of late, that she was reasoning out a disbelief in the fairies; there could be no harm in scorning them. She would never again do as she had done-as the ignorant peasant-folk did-no, never again!

Soon she was in the high-road. For a long while she was the only human figure upon it; a sombre, ruddy figure, for she wore a dress of some dull crimson stuff, and her hat-they called them gipsy-hats in those days-was black, and was tied down over her ears by black strings. Her sharply marked shadow was just a dimmer colour than herself; the road stretched

wide, and white, and dusty in the blaze of sunlight. Presently, a cart came along, loaded with fishing-nets, being carried down to one of the fishing-ports of the west coast; then a boy leading a cow with a rope passed her; then for a space she was alone; then two men came along. Strangely Nora flushed, for one was her brother-her brother Harry!

But why should she flush?

Simply because Harry was a sailor, and was away for a cruise; he was in the West Indies then, she knew.

Her little start was noted by the two men; one spoke to the other.

Then the three came nearly abreast of each other, and Nora, whose surprise had been quickly mastered by an instinct of swift and keen enquiry, was gazing into the stranger's face. He must be a stranger! Yes, he was bearded.

No; there was Harry's twinkling eye -what a mad boy he was! Boy! and twenty-one !

Again she must change. The stranger was not a seafaring man of any sort or kind; he was dressed as a man of fashion would be dressed. Now Manx society was not behind the times, but Nora's quick sense detected a difference; Manx tailoring had not turned out those clothes.

Then having come to the conclusion that her eyes had played her false, she as quickly turned away her head and passed on. Who were they? Strangers were rare in those days.

Nora was as curious as most girls can be, and was cogitating as to how she should find out. A very few seconds had brought her to that point when-no one else had passed her on the road-she heard someone running behind her. She turned.

It was one of the two men-not the bearded one.

"Miss Quayle," he said. He was fair and as handsome a fellow as one would wish to see. Directly he spoke, Nora knew he was no Manxman. A Londoner,

thought she.

"Yes," she answered; "but you do not know me?"

"That is true and yet, you see, I have learnt your name. We did not think of meeting you; he-I was told no one ever was seen on this road."

Nora was amused, and she was of a fearless nature.

"Was that why you chose it?" she said lightly.

Yes, it was." "Then

The gaiety went out of her face, and she drew herself up and apart.

A slight flush burnt on the man's fair cheeks, and he, too, unconsciously seemed braced with pride. Then he shook himself slightly, as if he would cast off all but what was the outward show of this meeting.

"When you go home, Miss Quayle, if you are asked anything about your walk, will you forget that you met me--met us, I will say ?"

"And why?" Nora was, as we have said, entirely fearless; the ways of her life, too, had been utterly out of the ken of the world's wickedness. Something struck her here like the scent of an adventure of some sort, and yet she saw no danger in questioning this stranger. "Why should I not say I met you ?-met you and Harry's double?"

"Harry's double!" cried the stranger. His surprise was certainly not veiled.

"Yes," she nodded her head, "Harry's double. If you must know, I have a brother whom, like an idiot, I took to be the man who was with you. But Harry is just now in the West Indies, so――"

'Plainly he could not be here." Such an extreme relief marked this speech that it struck Nora.

"Why do you speak so?" she cried.

"I do not know-yes, I do know. Miss Quayle, I am a bad actor, but I am bound to silence. Silence for a day or twosilence is the only thing I crave-will you be silent for me?

What a strange tone! How he pleaded, and yet in what a lordly way!

Nora felt helpless; and yet there was the spice of bravery in her which resented that feeling of helplessness; if she agreed to be silent, it should not be without a disclaimer.

"And if harm should come of my silence, what harm could speaking do?" "Much

but whether this were true or not, she certainly, in this interview, had some fire in her which made her act without the least fear. She felt reckless in a gay sort of way.

"It is such a complication!" he began. "If only you had not met us!—but you recognise faces quickly."

"You think that, because I took your bearded friend for Harry. Harry has no hair on his face, but," she gave a little laugh, "the rest was as like as-as

"As I shall be to a stranger whom you may see soon-to-morrow, the next day, nay, perhaps to night; I cannot say when." Nora was wild.

"And if you are the stranger, why should not the bearded man be Harry? Answer that."

The stranger threw his head back with a gesture of pride and yet of discomfort. A quick flush came into his face, as with a manner as bright and as reckless as her own, he said:

"Why not, indeed! Can I answer that, Miss Quayle?" He shrugged his shoulders as a foreigner does, and yet he was no foreigner. "Certainly I cannot."

On that very evening, Nora, having been wandering in the grounds of her home, went in as the spring twilight was falling, and was told not to go into the diningroom, because her father was there. A stranger had come.

Presently, Mr. Quayle was heard to be talking, amicably and hospitably, with this stranger, and to go upstairs with him. There the stranger was left, and the master of the house acquainted his womenfolk, his wife and daughters, with the fact of a Mr. Bowen having come, bearing an introduction from Harry. He had seen Harry at the Bermudas, and Harry, hearing that he was going on business to the Isle of Man as soon as he could get to England, had, sailor like, jumped to the conclusion that Ballafane, his father's house, must be his quarters; he had written to his father bidding him "give Bowen a shake-down. You'll find him a good sort of fellow." Then the letter ended with this: "Don't look for me as soon as I said, for I have had too much of land, and if I can exchange and go off on a longer cruise I shall. I'll write when I can. Bowen off to England to-morrow. The Celeste (Harry's ship) sails here in two days."

The letter was dated from Bermudas, Dec. 31st."

from

"The

The interval was easily bridged. Mr. Bowen was the best of company, and that evening won as appreciative an audience as ever did Othello, over his talk of travellers' adventuring.

For days the stranger stayed on. He went here and there, but each evening he was at home. The grounds of Ballafane were large enough, and the girls of Ballafane were charming enough to enchain even an exacting personage, and Richard Bowen"Dick Bowen," as the stranger said he was called-was far too polished, far too much a man of the world to suggest any such matter as the possibility of his being "exacting."

CHAPTER II.

For a day and a

BAD weather set in. night a gale blew like fury from the southwest-that means that it roared up Glen Maye, and would tear from its opening on the high land over the fields and homesteads behind. The old trees embosoming Ballafane shook, and swayed, and shrieked. Lying so near to so rocky a coast, the people in the village about were all alive to the fears of wreckage.

A craft, of unknown nationality, had been lying off and on, pushing too close in for safety in such a gale; at last she had sailed away.

You would fancy that to girls living in such a house as Ballafane was, this fact about the strange craft would have been of no interest whatever. But the Manx are nothing if not a seafaring folk; men, women, and children look to the sea as to an element as much their own as the green hilly land on which their homes are built, and the Ballafane people talked as much about the craft drifting about in the gale, as did the fisher-folk on the shore.

When Johnny Denison brought in the news of her sailing away north, of her going well past the Mull of Galloway, Nora laughed.

"She is gone into the infinite!" she cried. cried. "A vision-lost!"

"I do not catch some occult meaning;' and the stranger, by no means a stranger by this time, looked to Nora, and to Denison, and to Nora again. "Then be wise; "2 and Nora set up a manner of grave advice. "Do not probe the mysterious, skim along the top of itthat's fun; but to dive into the interior secrecies-beware!"

"You only make me curious."

"You know nothing of our ways here,"