"Not a bit, she isn't----" I was beginning joyously, when I caught Lottie's eye; "I mean--" I added lamely, "a girl always understands another girl's affairs, and will help if she can--unless she has herself some stake in the game!" And in saying this, I believe that for once in a way I hit upon a great and nearly universal truth. CHAPTER XXVIII LOVE AND THE LOGICIAN I knew that the Yule Fair was going on down in the village, and that on account of it all Eden Valley was in an uproar. The clamour was deafening at the lower end of the "clachan," where most of the show folk congregated. The rooks were cawing belatedly in the tall ashes round the big square--into which, in the old times of the Annandale thieves, the country folk used to drive the cattle to be out of the way of Johnstones and Jardines. I skirted the town, therefore, so as not to meet with the full blast of the riot. With such an unruly gang about, I kept Charlotte Anderson well in sight till I saw her safe into Miss Seraphina's. Of course, nobody who knew her for a daughter of Fighting Rob of Birkenbog would have laid hand upon her, but at such a time there might be some who did not know the repute of her father. The great gong in front of the "Funny Folks" booth went "Bang! bang!" Opposite, the fife and drum spoke for the temple of the legitimate drama. At the selling-stalls importunate vendors of tin-ware rattled their stock-in-trade and roared at the world in general, as if buyers could be forced to attend to the most noisy--which, indeed, they mostly did. From the dusky kennels in which the gipsies told fortunes and mended the rush-bottomed chairs of the Valley goodwives came over the wall a faint odour of mouldy hay, which lingered for weeks about every apartment to which any of their goods were admitted. As for me, I had had enough of girls for one day, and I was wondering how best to cut across the fields, take a turn about the town, and so get home to my father's by the wood of pines behind the school, when suddenly a voice dropped upon me that fairly stunned me, so unexpected it was. "Mr. Duncan MacAlpine," it said, "I congratulate you on your choice of a father-in-law. You could not have done better!" It was Miss Irma herself, taking a walk in a place where at such a time she had no business to be--on the little farm path that skirts the woods above the town. Louis was with her, but I thought that in the far distance I could discern the lounging shadow of the faithful Eben. I stood speechless straight before her, but she passed on, lightly switching the crisped brown stalks of last year's thistles with a little wand she had brought. I saw that she did not mean to speak to me, and I turned desperately to accompany her.