while over the low sweep of the sands St. Andrews itself stands misty and fine, its long line of cliff and tower and piled houses ending in the jagged edge of the ruined castle, and the tall mystery of St. Rule’s--the square tower which baffles archæology. Such is the scene, rural and fresh and green, with a somewhat chill tone of color, and many a token of the winds in the bare anatomy and shivering branches of the trees, and with no great amount of beauty to boast of: yet ever full of attraction and suggestion, as such a width of firmament, such a great circle of horizon, such variety of sea and land and hills and towers must ever be. Through the door-way in the wall, which is rich with rough but effective ornamentation, boldly cut string-courses, which look as if there might once have been some kind of fortification to be supported, you enter a little court, from which the house opens--a square court, turfed and green, and containing a well and an old thorn-tree. The ruined portion of the house, roofless and mouldering, is on the east side; the habitable part on the west, an oblong block of building; and at the well, on the day when this history opens, two figures, one old, one young, both full in the gleam of westering sunshine which breaks over the wall. One-half of the court is in deepest shade, but this all bright, so bright that the girl shades her eyes with one hand, while with the other she pumps water into the old woman’s pail, who stands with arms a-kimbo, shaking her head, and giving vent to that murmur of remonstrative disapproval, inarticulate yet very expressive, which is made by the tongue against the palate. “Tt-tt-tt,” says old Bell. “If ever there was a masterful miss and an ill-willy, and ane that will have her ain way!” “How can I be masterful and a miss too?” said the girl, laughing. Her arm grew tired, however, with the pumping, and she left off before the vessel was half full. “There!” she said, “I’ll cry on Jeanie to do the rest for you. I’m tired now.” “Oh, Miss Margret! but you need not cry upon Jeanie. I am fit enough, though I’m old, to do that much for mysel’.”