'You look like Helen M'Gregor,' said I, smiling. She smiled back brightly, but shook her head. 'I haven't courage enough for myself, much less enough to inspire anybody else with,' she said rather sadly. 'Courage is a thing you can't measure until you have to use it. What makes you think you have none, Babiole? I feel sure you have a great deal.' She began to laugh, in the shyest, sweetest, prettiest way; and, putting her hand on the stout stick I carried, she twisted it round and round in the earth, and looked up in my face affectionately. 'Yes, yes, I know. That is the way you always teach me. You told me I was intelligent and industrious, until I began to be both; and I daresay, if you were to tell me long enough,--in your own kind way, helping me on by your own strong wish,--that I was brave, why I should become so. But I'm not now.' 'Tell me how you know that.' 'Well, to-day I only heard of something that--that would be very hard to bear, and I broke down altogether.' 'What was it?' No answer. 'Was it something your father said?' She looked up with a flash of inquiry in her eyes. 'Was it something about your going away from here?' She answered by a look only; a look that was timid, mournful, affectionate, and that had yet another element; for behind all this tenderness and softness, there danced the restless yearning of an eager young spirit. 'Well, and haven't I heard certain people talking about the interesting things that go on in the world, and hinting that Ballater was a slow and tiresome old place, where nothing ever happened worth mentioning?' She blushed and hung her head a moment, and then began her defence in a very meek voice. 'I don't think I've really ever spoken so ungratefully as that about dear old Ballater. It's quite true that I should like to see a little more of the big world outside some day, but I think I could be content to hear what you care to tell me about it for a year or two longer first. The fact is, Mr. Maude,' she went on, looking up at me with an altogether irresistible smile of affection and sympathy, 'I could make up my mind to leave the hills, but I can't make up my mind to leave you.' What an opening! I began to shiver and quake and to give signs of such unmistakable nervousness that Babiole evidently thought I was going to be taken with a fit of some sort. She looked helplessly around, and I gave a laugh like a schoolboy who comes too early to his first ball. 'I'm not ill, Babiole; I have something to say to you.' Upon this she became nearly as much disturbed as I, and the colour left her sensitive face, as she sat mutely down on the tree-trunk again to hear me.