All that evening Elsie tried in vain to secure the attention of Rodie, her brother, her own brother, whom life had already swept away from her, out of her feminine sphere. To be so intimately allied as that in childhood, which is a thing which doubles every joy, at least for the girl, and probably at that early age for the boy also--generally involves the first pang of existence to one at least of these sworn companions. It is, I think, always the girl who suffers, though sometimes no doubt the girl is carried away on the wave of new friendships, especially if she goes to school, and is swept up into the whirl of feminine occupations, before the boy is launched into the circle of contemporaries, who are more absorbing still. But Rodie among “his laddies,” had left his sister more completely “out of it” than any boy in possession of all his faculties can ever be. He was always busy with something, always wandering somewhere with the Seatons, or the Beatons, when he was not in the still more entrancing company of Johnny Wemyss. And they never seemed to be tired of each other’s company, day or night. There were times when he did not even come in to his meals, but went along with his cronies, in the freedom of his age, without invitation or preparation; even he had been known to sit down to the stoved potatoes in the Wemyss’s cottage, though they were not in a class of life to entertain the minister’s son; but what did Rodie care? When he brought in Johnny Wemyss in his turn to supper, Mrs. Buchanan could not shame the rules of hospitality, by giving the fisher lad a bad reception, but her notice of him was constrained, if kind, so that none of the young ones were very comfortable. But Alick Seaton and Ralph Beaton were frequent visitors, taken as a matter of course, and would sit at the end of the table, with Rodie between them, making their jokes, and shaking with convulsions of private laughter, which broke out now and then into a subdued roar, making the elders ask “what was the fun now?” John in special, who was “at the College,” and sported a red gown about the streets, being gruff in his critical remarks: for he had now arrived at an age when you are bound to behave yourself, and not to “carry on” like the laddies. This being the state of affairs, however, it was very difficult to long hold of Rodie, who often “convoyed” his friends home, and came back at the latest moment practicable, only escaping reprimand by a rush up-stairs to bed. It was not therefore till the Sunday following that Elsie had any opportunity of seeing her brother in private, which even then was not with his will: but there was an interval between breakfast and church, which Rodie, with the best will in the world, could not spend with “his laddies,” and which consequently lay undefended, liable to the incursions of his sister. This moment was usually spent in the garden, and often in calculating strokes by which, teeing at a certain spot, he might make sure or almost