Now it had been with a rush of recollection that Glendochart had come to the linn side. He remembered well how Kirsteen had rushed on before him as airy as a feather, trying the stones with her light weight, to find which was most steady, like a bird alighting upon them, putting out her hand to help him--she the young lady who ought to have been indebted to him for help. And he remembered the slip he had made and his fall, and the tremble in her voice which he had feared meant laughter, and the effort he had made to look as if a tumble on the wet sod was nothing, a thing he did not mind. Mary had far more sense to go round by the road. He felt himself in so much better a position agreeing with her that it was too steep for a lady, and gallantly guiding her round the safer way. It was a soft evening with no wind, and a delightful spring sky full of brightness and hope. In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, and the fancy of an old young gentleman who has been led to think of these matters and then has been cruelly disappointed, is if anything more easily awakened. Glendochart gave Mary his arm to help her along the gentler round of the road, and his mouth was opened and he spoke. “Miss Mary,” he said, “ye were very kind a few months back in a matter which we need not now enter into. I can never cease to be grateful to you for the warning ye gave me. And ye have been more than kind since I came home. It has been a great pleasure to come to Drumcarro, though I did it at first mostly out of a sense of duty. But to see you gave it a charm.” “Oh, Glendochart, you are very kind to say so,” said Mary. “We just all of us have a debt to you that we can never repay.” “Not a word about debt, or I would soon be on the wrong side of the balance. It has been a great part of the pleasure of my life to come--but now I will have to be thinking whether I should come again.” “Oh, Glendochart! and wherefore so?” cried Mary with alarm in her eyes. “My dear young lady,” said the Highland gentleman, “I am getting an old man--I was mangrown (and perhaps a trifle more) before ye were born.” She had said “Oh, no!” softly while he was speaking, with a gentle pressure upon his arm--and now when he paused she lifted her dove’s eyes and said, “What does that matter?” in tones as soft as the wood-pigeon’s coo. “You must understand me,” he said, “which I am afraid was more than your sister, poor thing, ever did--I have been experiencing a great change of feeling. She was a bright young creature full of pretty ways--and I was just beguiled--the like of that may blind a man for a time, but when his eyes are opened to the knowledge of a more excellent way--that he had not observed before--”