She was gone before either of us could answer, leaving us like a pair of culprits standing in the middle of the road. A little breeze fanned her clothing, and they shook behind her as to be free from some contamination. She had overtaken and joined a woman in front of her before I had recovered from my astonishment M’Iver turned from surveying her departure with lowered eyebrows, and gave me a look with half-a-dozen contending thoughts in it. “That’s the end of it,” said he, as much to himself as for my ear, “and the odd thing of it again is that she never seemed so precious fine a woman as when it was ‘a bye wi’ auld days and you,’ as the Scots song says.” “It beats me to fathom,” I confessed. “Do I understand that you admitted to the lady that you were the father of the child?” “I admitted nothing,” he said, cunningly, “if you’ll take the trouble to think again. I but let the lady have her own way, which most of her sex generally manage from me in the long-run.” “But, man! you could leave her only one impression, that you are as black as she thinks you, and am I not sure you fall far short of that?” “Thank you,” he said; “it is good of you to say it. I am for off whenever my affairs here are settled, and when I’m the breadth of seas afar from Inneraora, you’ll think as well as you can of John M’Iver, who’ll maybe not grudge having lost the lady’s affection if he kept his friend’s and comrade’s heart.” He was vastly moved as he spoke. He took my hand and wrung it fiercely; he turned without another word, good or ill, and strode back on his way to the camp, leaving me to seek my way to the town alone. CHAPTER XXXII.--A SCANDAL AND A QUARREL. On some days I kept to Glen Shim as the tod keeps to the cairn when heather burns, afraid almost to let even my thoughts wander there lest they should fly back distressed, to say the hope I cherished was in vain. I worked in the wood among Use pines that now make rooftrees for my home, and at nights I went on ttilidh among some of the poorer houses of the Glen, and found a drug for a mind uneasy in the talcs our peasants told around the fire. A drug, and yet a drug sometimes with the very disease in itself I sought for it to kill. For the love of a man for a maid is the one story of all lands, of all ages, trick it as we may, and my good people, telling their old ancient histories round the lire, found, although they never knew it, a young man’s quivering heart a score of times a night.