Earlshaugh--the old house of so many family traditions and memories--was very dear to Maude in spite of all the dark and mortifying hours she had lately spent under its roof. What races and frolics and fun had gone on there in the past time, when she, her brothers, and Hester Maule were all happy children, in the long corridors and ghostly old attics, under the steep roofs and pointed turrets where the antique vanes creaked in the wind; and how greater seemed their fun when the rain storms of winter or spring came rattling down on the old stone slates, and they all nestled together under the slope, with a sense of protection and power unknown in future years--so the girl's heart clung to the old roof-tree with a love that nothing in the future could destroy. There was no use thinking of all these and a thousand other things, as her home was now to be wherever that of Jack Elliot was. Some of her regrets at times were shared by Roland, for they were a race peculiar to--but not alone in--Scotland, these Lindsays of Earlshaugh. They had ever been high in pride and strong in self-will, lording it over their neighbours in the Howe and East Neuk of Fife, in the days when many a barbed horse was in stall, and many an armed man, 'boden in effeir of weir,' sat at the Laird's table; proud of their ancient pedigree and many heroic deeds, all unstained by timidity in war, and foreign gold in time of peace--a stain few Scottish noble families are without; proud of the broad lands that had come to them not by labour or talent certainly, but by the undoubted right to be lords of the soil by inheritance, when the soil was not held by a mere sheepskin, but by the sword and knight-service to the Scottish Crown. And now to return to more prosaic times. We have said that there was a chronic antagonism between Maude and her stepmother, Mrs. Lindsay; then, when Roland hurried to quit Earlshaugh, she and Jack resolved to get married, and married they were, quite quietly, as Roland was in haste to be gone to Egypt, and they were to pass a brief honeymoon ere Jack followed him--as he had inexorably to take his turn of service there too. Of the Earlshaugh will, and Maude's small inheritance under it, Jack made light indeed. 'What matters it?' said he; 'I am Elliot of Braidielee, and there will be our home-coming, when we have smashed up the Mahdi, and I can return with honour!' At this marriage Annot Drummond was not present--no invitation was given to her, and Mrs. Lindsay excused herself through illness. Maude laughed at her apology. 'Though we were grown up, and so beyond her reach in some respects, she has been like the typical stepmother of the old fairy tales,' said the girl, who, sunny-haired, blue-eyed, and bright, looked wonderfully beautiful, apart from t lat strange halo which surrounds every bride on her marriage day. 'All weddings are dull affairs, and we are well out of this one--don't you think so?' said Annot coyly to her new lover.