Poor Harry!--weak and yielding as the willow in the wind, there was no blame to which he was so nervously susceptible as this--no accusation which he denied and defied with so much anger. Cuthbert turned again to the window. Just before him, in a half-built street, which struck off at right angles from the road to Port Dundas, Maggie McGillivray sat in the cold sunshine on the step of her mother’s door, “clipping,”[1] with a web of tamboured muslin on her knee and scissors in her hand. Maggie, as Violet Muir could have testified, was only sixteen, though her “clipping” had helped the family income for several years, and her own money had purchased for her the little bright red tartan shawl which just covered her stout shoulders, but left her arms unincumbered and her hands free. On the half-paved road before her stood a mill-girl, with whom work was “slack,” and who had spent a full hour this morning elaborating the beautiful plaits and braids of her crisped hair. This young lady, with much gesture and many superlatives, was describing to the busy little worker an itinerant show which had fixed its temporary quarters at Port Dundas, wherein there was a giant and a dwarf, a beautiful lady who danced, and a boy who had pink eyes, and which she herself was on the way to see; but Maggie clipped and shook her head, unfolding the web, to show her tempter how much had to be done before one o’clock, when she must lay it by, to take up the pitcher with her father’s broth, and carry to him his wholesome dinner; and when the idler sauntered on, to seek some less scrupulous companion, Maggie returned to her labour with such alacrity, that Cuthbert fancied he could almost hear the sound of the shears, and the loud clear lilt of the “Learig,” to which they kept time. Yet Maggie McGillivray was only a humble little girl, while Harry Muir, in his way, was an accomplished man. Cuthbert looked back upon the young man’s fine intelligent face, on which the proud look of defiance still lingered, with a sigh of pity and regret--not so would _he_ have overcome the temptation. CHAPTER V. “She had such a nature, You would have thought some fairy, ’ware o’ th’ hour, When out of heaven came a young soul, predestined For a King’s heir, to make a conqueror of him Had, by some strange and wondrous art, diverted The new-born spirit from its proper course, And hid it in the form of a poor maiden; Leaving the princely weakling in his cradle, Shorn of the fate that waited him: the other Chafing at its caged limits all its days----” OLD PLAY.