cost nothing--a matter of primitive luxury unknown in our days. Young Erskine would look in, and nobody was otherwise than pleased to see him; other people, too, “looked in” on other days. Sometimes there would be two or three strangers, equally unexpected and welcome at the widow’s table. There was glorious fish, fresh from the sea--cod, with great milk-white flakes, and the delicious haddocks of the Firth, which cost next to nothing, to take the edge off the wholesome appetites of these young people; and savoury old Scotch dishes, such as exist no more--Scotch collops, brown and fragrant; chickens, which were not called chickens, but “hens”; dainty curries, in which the homely, rural gentry, with sons and brothers by the score in India, were as great critics as the old Indians themselves. To the board thus spread the country neighbours were always kindly welcome; and Mrs. Sinclair took no special notice of the frequency with which young Erskine made his appearance. If Nora was more observant, she was also more tolerant than she had been in Edinburgh. She did not even seem to dislike it much when chance brought her in contact with the young student among the rocks, as sometimes happened. Though that age was not so advanced as our own, it was still possible, even at so rudimentary an epoch, to make good use of the sea-coast, and the marine creatures which the young man was studying, to further such encounters. He called them by their Latin names when he walked with Nora up to the Gushat-house, and Mrs. Sinclair respected his habits of research. “It’s little good he’ll get out of the tangle on the rocks,” she would say, “but it shows a diligent mind.” At which praise Willy would blush and Nora smile.