'I shall cut them for Mr. Falconer; he is the only stranger here,' said Mary Montgomerie, hurrying to the sideboard, and proceeding deftly with her pretty hands to do so; while Cecil murmured his thanks, and tendered his silver case, or sandwich-box. 'Can't the cook do this?' growled Hew in her ear. 'Yes, but not half so well as I,' replied the girl, laughingly. 'I can be so expert when I choose, Hew.' In the hall, where hung all manner of hats and greatcoats, plaids, whips, salmon-listers, whips and walking-sticks, Sir Piers assumed an old and well-worn wideawake, the band of which was usually garnished with hooks and flies, for he was as keen a sportsman with his rod and line as with his double-barrelled gun. And now the whole party set forth from the house, Cecil looking more than once to the soft faces of the two smiling girls, who, from the breakfast-room window, watched their departure. His mind _already_ was full of sweet Mary Montgomerie, and he would rather, a thousand times, have remained, to sun himself in the light of her winning eyes, than to toil through the damp covers to knock over a few rabbits or a brace of harmless birds; and he could but console himself by counting the hours that must inevitably elapse ere he could meet her again, and strive to endure them as best he might. Hew detected one of these glances thrown back to 'the face at the window,' and remembering his ramble with Mary in the Dovecot Park, bit his nether lip; and before the day's shooting was over, Falconer had a specimen of what the amiable Hew might be capable of doing if provoked. Preoccupied thus, Cecil Falconer thought that on this particular morning 'the Land of Burns' seemed uncommonly dreary. Mist was rolling along the valleys, and the landscape looked dank and moist through its medium. Hew, who, though not ungentlemanlike in bearing, was, as we have said, naturally coarse in mind, and sometimes blunt in manner, the result of association with billiard-markers and stablemen, on seeing Falconer give another glance towards the house, said abruptly, and with what he meant to be a laugh: 'I don't think you can see her now.' 'Her--who?' asked Falconer, with surprise. 'Well, my cousin; for I think you evidently admire her.' 'An odd remark!' thought Cecil, looking a little annoyed; but he said, cordially: 'I do indeed admire her; who could fail to do so? But what leads you to infer that I do so more particularly?' 'By Jove! I saw that your eyes were seldom off her; but it is no use, Mr. Falconer,' said Hew, with a pretended genial laugh, 'as she has no eyes in reality--save for one fellow.' 'What the deuce can he mean?' thought Falconer, a little annoyed by the speaker's manner, which seemed to indicate advice or warning, or impertinence. 'You are cousins, then?' he merely said coldly.