"She's an awfu' lassie," Nanny said, apologetically, "but it'll just be the way she has been brought up." "She has been very good to you, Nanny." "She has; leastwise, she promises to be. Mr. Dishart, she's awa'; what if she doesna come back?" Nanny spoke nervously, and Gavin drew a long face. "I think she will," he said faintly. "I am confident of it," he added in the same voice. "And has she the siller?" "I believe in her," said Gavin, so doggedly that his own words reassured him. "She has an excellent heart." "Ay," said Nanny, to whom the minister's faith was more than the Egyptian's promise, "and that's hardly natural in a gaen-aboot body. Yet a gypsy she maun be, for naebody would pretend to be ane that wasna. Tod, she proved she was an Egyptian by dauring to send you to the well." This conclusive argument brought her prospective dower so close to Nanny's eyes that it hid the poorhouse. "I suppose she'll gie you the money," she said, "and syne you'll gie me the seven shillings a week?" "That seems the best plan," Gavin answered. "And what will you gie it me in?" Nanny asked, with something on her mind. "I would be terrible obliged if you gae it to me in saxpences." "Do the smaller coins go farther?" Gavin asked, curiously. "Na, it's no that. But I've heard tell o' folk giving away half- crowns by mistake for twa-shilling bits; ay, and there's something dizzying in ha'en fower-and-twenty pennies In one piece; it has sic terrible little bulk. Sanders had aince a gold sovereign, and he looked at it so often that it seemed to grow smaller and smaller in his hand till he was feared it micht just be a half after all." Her mind relieved on this matter, the old woman set off for the well. A minute afterwards Gavin went to the door to look for the gypsy, and, behold, Nanny was no further than the gate. Have you who read ever been sick near to death, and then so far recovered that you could once again stand at your window? If so, you have not forgotten how the beauty of the world struck you afresh, so that you looked long and said many times, "How fair a world it is!" like one who had made a discovery. It was such a look that Nanny gave to the hill and Caddam while she stood at her garden gate. Gavin returned to the fire and watched a girl in it in an officer's cloak playing at hide and seek with soldiers. After a time he sighed, then looked round sharply to see who had sighed, then, absent-mindedly, lifted the empty kettle and placed it on the glowing peats. He was standing glaring at the kettle, his arms folded, when Nanny returned from the well. "I've been thinking," she said, "o' something that proves the lassie to be just an Egyptian. Ay, I noticed she wasna nane awed when I said you was the Auld Licht minister. Weel, I'se uphaud that came frae her living ower muckle in the open air. Is there no' a smell o' burning in the house?"