This ancient habitation of a hard-fighting race was framed on two sides by a garden that looked as old as the walls which towered above it, and was well-nigh as simple and sober. Dark clipped yews, and smooth green grass, and graceful old-world flowers were its chief and sufficient ingredients. The genius who designed the pagoda had not yet turned his attention to the garden when Providence checked his career. A wood of black Scotch firs stretched for a long way beyond this pleasant garden, and struck a stern northern note befitting the gnarled battlements; while, nearer the house, gray beech stems towered out of the brown dead leaves below up to the brown live buds a hundred feet nearer the clouds. On the remaining two sides of the castle you were not supposed to bestow attention, since after the old custom the home farm approached more closely than is fashionable nowadays; though to the curious they were the sides best worth attention, owing to the cultured pagoda-builder having deemed it beneath his dignity to molest them. One afternoon in early spring Ellen Berstoun walked slowly down a sheltered garden path. She had been singularly moody of late--so distressed, indeed, and so little like a lucky girl whose wedding might be fixed for any day she chose to name, that her five unmarried sisters held many private debates on the causes of her conduct. The three next to her in years expressed grave apprehensions lest the very fairly creditable marriage arranged for her should after all fall through. Ellen was not treating Andrew well, they complained; while on the other hand, the two youngest, being as yet irresponsibly romantic, declared vigorously that they had sooner dear Ellen remained single to the end of her days than introduced such a long-lipped, fat-cheeked brother-in-law into the family. It was a part of poor Ellen's burden that she was acutely conscious of the duty which her parents and all her aunts assured her she owed these sisters. But, on the other hand, to share the remainder of her existence with Andrew Walkingshaw--There rose vividly a picture of that most respectable of partners, and the emotion attendant on this vision drew from her a sigh that ought to have convinced the most skeptical she was very hard hit indeed. It was at this moment that she spied a lad approaching from the house. "Well, Jimmy?" she inquired. With an appearance of some caution, he handed her a note. "It was to be gi'en to yoursel' privately, miss," he said mysteriously, and turned to go. "Is there no answer?" she asked. "He said I wasna to bide for an answer." He hurried off as though his directions had been peremptory, and Ellen opened the letter. It was written upon the notepaper of a local inn, and if she was surprised to discover the writer, she was still more astonished by the contents.