"Ah, yes. It is so easy merely to give money when we have more than we know what to do with. But personal effort, the kind word and look which sweeten even the smallest gift, are often more valued than coin or domestic comforts. No one knows that better than you do, Mr. Gilmour. Well! We must not look back, but be thankful for present favours; we have Mr. Mitchelson amongst us, and, if I am not mistaken, he has found something sufficiently attractive to keep him here." Miss Chatterton's second shaft was more skilfully aimed than her first. It went straight home, and so, after a very short interval, did Mr. Gilmour. He gave a hurried glance through the tents, then pleading the weariness consequent on a long journey, he hastened to his rooms, feeling as if the sunshine were gone out of his life, and regretting that his engagement with Mr. Harvey would bind him to Rathbury for the greater part of a year to come. Weeks passed on and shaped themselves into months. Everybody saw that Mr. Gilmour was an altered man in many ways; more than ever devoted to his work, he was more solitary in it. The little wall of separation of which Miss Chatterton had so successfully laid the foundation on the day of the Flower Show, had been growing in solidity. It might be an invisible one to outer eyes, but it was an equally real thing to Elsie and himself. She, poor child! Helped the structure by laying thereon the materials for its increase. First doubt of Gilmour's real sentiments, then self-reproach for having too easily yielded her young heart to his keeping; then the mistake about Katie; then the sense of sisterly love and self-devotion, to which she looked as her one consolation amidst the wreck of her happiness. And Douglass Gilmour also helped to raise the barrier higher and higher, for when Elsie and he met from time to time, he was just the courteous Christian gentleman to her as to all the rest, and no more. Yes, the barrier grew. There was no more a bending of the tall head beside the slight girlish figure sauntering down the path in the summer sunlight; no little lingerings by the gate to say "Good-bye," and making these two little monosyllables last a long time in the saying. Indeed, the sunlight itself was rarer now, for summer and autumn were gone, and the keen wind was whisking the last sere leaves from the boughs and sending them whirling along the walks, as if to banish even the memory of what had been the golden glories of the earlier year.