with glances coquettish yet repelling round her shoulder at me as I stood turning my _chapeau-de-bras_ in my hand as a boy turns his bonnet in presence of laird or dominie. The street was shaking now with the sound of marching soldiers, whose platoons were passing in a momentary silence of trumpet or drum. All at once the trumpets blared forth just in front of the house, broke upon her song, and gave a heavensent diversion to our comedy or tragedy or whatever it was in the parlour. We both stood looking out at the window for a while in silence, watching the passing troops, and when the last file had gone, she turned with a change of topic “If these men had been in England ten years ago,” she said, “when brisk affairs were doing there with Highland claymores, your Uncle Andrew would have been there, too, and it would not perhaps be your father who was Laird of Hazel Den. But that's all by with now. And when do you set out with Father Hamilton?” She had a face as serene as fate; my heart ached to tell her that I loved her, but her manner made me hold my tongue on that. “In three days,” I said, still turning my hat and wishing myself elsewhere, though her presence intoxicated. “In three days!” she said, as one astonished. “I had thought it had been a week at the earliest. Will I tell you what you might do? You are my great blate bold son, you know, from the moors of Mearns, and I will be wae, wae, to think of you travelling all round Europe without a friend of your own country to exchange a word with. Write to me; will you?” “Indeed and I will, and that gaily,” I cried, delighted at the prospect. “And you will tell me all your exploits and where you have been and what you have seen, and where you are going and what you are going to do, and be sure there will be one Scots heart thinking of you (besides Isobel, I daresay), and I declare to you this one will follow every league upon the map, saying 'the blate lad's there to-day,' 'the blate lad's to be here at noon to-morrow.' Is it a bargain? Because you know I will write to you--but oh! I forgot; what of the priest? Not for worlds would I have him know that I kept up a correspondence with his secretary. That is bad.” She gazed rather expectantly at me as if looking for a suggestion, but the problem was beyond me, and she sighed. “Of course his reverence need not know anything about it,” she said then. “Certainly,” I acquiesced, jumping at so obvious a solution. “I will never mention to him anything about it.” “But how will I get your letters and how will you get mine without his suspecting something?” “Oh, but he cannot suspect.”