’Good night, Ronald,’ said she pleasantly. ’Good night, Miss Douglas,’ said he; ’Maggie must not keep you up so late again.’ And therewith he walked away back again along the white road, and only now perceived that by some accident his faithful companion Harry had been shut in when they left. He also discovered, when he got home, that his sister Maggie had been so intent puzzling over some arithmetical mysteries which Meenie had been explaining to her, that she had still further delayed her going to bed. ’What, what?’ said he, good-humouredly. ’Not in bed yet, lass?’ The little red-headed, freckled-faced lassie obediently gathered up her belongings, but at the door she lingered for a moment. ’Ronald,’ said she, timidly, ’why do ye call Meenie "Miss Douglas?" It’s not friendly.’ ’When ye’re a bit older, lass, ye’ll understand,’ he said, with a laugh. Little Maggie was distressed in a vague way, for she had formed a warm affection for Meenie Douglas, and it seemed hard and strange that her own brother should show himself so distant in manner. ’Do you think she’s proud? for she’s not that,’ the little girl made bold to say. ’Have ye never heard o’ the Stuarts of Glengask?’ said he; and he added grimly, ’My certes, if ye were two or three years older, I’m thinking Mrs. Douglas would have told ye ere now how Sir Alexander used to call on them in Edinburgh every time he came north. Most folk have heard that story. But however, when Meenie, as ye like to call her, goes to live in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or some o’ the big towns, of course she’ll be Miss Douglas to every one, as she ought to be here, only that she’s taken a fancy to you, and, my lass, fairly spoils ye with her kindness. Now, off with ye, and dinna fash your head about what I or any one else calls her; if she’s content to be Meenie to you, ye should be proud enough.’ As soon as she was gone he stirred up the peats, lit his pipe, and drew in a chair to the small table near the fire. It was his first pipe that evening, and he wished to have it in comfort. And then, to pass the time, he unlocked and opened a drawer in the table, and began to rummage through the papers collected there—all kinds of shreds and fragments they were, scored over mostly in pencil, and many of them bearing marks as if the writing had been done outside in the rain.