Fifteen minutes passed. Salemina was making Jubilee sandwiches at Pettybaw House, Miss Dalziel was asleep in her room, I was being devoured slowly by curiosity, when Francesca came down without a word, walked out of the front door, went up to the main street, and entered the village post-office without so much as a backward glance. She was a changed being, then! I might as well be living in a Gaboriau novel, I thought, and went up into my little painting and writing room to address a programme of the Pettybaw celebration to Lady Baird, watch for the glimpse of Willie coming down the loaning, and see if I could discover where Francesca went from the post-office. Sitting down by my desk, I could find neither my wax nor my silver candlestick, my scissors nor my ball of twine. Plainly Francesca had been on one of her borrowing tours; and she had left an additional trace of herself--if one were needed--in a book of old Scottish ballads, open at 'Hynde Horn.' I glanced at it idly while I was waiting for her to return. I was not familiar with the opening verses, and these were the first lines that met my eye:-- 'Oh, he gave to his love a silver wand, Her sceptre of rule over fair Scotland; With three singing laverocks set thereon For to mind her of him when he was gone. And his love gave to him a gay gold ring With three shining diamonds set therein; Oh, his love gave to him this gay gold ring, Of virtue and value above all thing.' A light dawned upon me! The silver mystery, then, was intended for a wand--and a very pretty way of making love to an American girl, too, to call it a 'sceptre of rule over fair Scotland'; and the three birds were three singing laverocks 'to mind her of him when he was gone'! But the real Hynde Horn in the dear old ballad had a truelove who was not captious and capricious and cold like Francesca. His love gave him a gay gold ring-- 'Of virtue and value above all thing.' Yet stay: behind the ballad book flung heedlessly on my desk was--what should it be but the little morocco case, empty now, in which our Francesca keeps her dead mother's engagement ring--the mother who died when she was a wee child. Truly a very pretty modern ballad to be sung in these unromantic, degenerate days! Francesca came in at the door behind me, saw her secret reflected in my tell-tale face, saw the sympathetic moisture in my eyes, and, flinging herself into my willing arms, burst into tears.