When, on this clear morning, she was fully equipped for her walk, she stole silently down the stair, and made her way out into the now awakening day. The little hamlet was showing signs of life. A stable-lad was trying to get hold of a horse that had strayed into the meadow; a collie was barking its excitement over this performance; the pretty Nelly appeared carrying an armful of clothes to be hung out to dry. And then, as Meenie passed the inn, she was joined by Harry the terrier, who, after the first grovelling demonstrations of joy, seemed to take it for granted that he was to be allowed to accompany her. And she was nothing loth. The fact was, she was setting out in quest of that distant eyrie of Ronald’s of which he had often told her; and she doubted very much whether she would be able to find it; and she considered that perhaps the little terrier might help her. Would he not naturally make for his master’s accustomed resting-place, when they were sufficiently high up on the far Clebrig slopes? So they went away along the road together; and she was talking to her companion; and telling him a good deal more about Glasgow, and about his master, than probably he could understand. Considering, indeed, that this young lady had just been sent home in deep disgrace, she seemed in excellent spirits. She had borne the parting admonitions and upbraidings of her sister Agatha with a most astonishing indifference; she had received her mother’s reproaches with a placid equanimity that the little woman could not understand at all (only that Meenie’s face once or twice grew fixed and proud when there was some scornful reference to Ronald); and she had forthwith set about nursing her father—who had caught a severe chill and was in bed—with an amiable assiduity, just as if nothing had happened. As regards her father, he either did not know, or had refused to know, about Meenie’s lamentable conduct. On this one point he was hopelessly perverse; he never would listen to anything said against this daughter of his; Meenie was always in the right—no matter what it was. And so, notwithstanding that she had been sent home as one in disgrace, and had been received as one in disgrace, she installed herself as her father’s nurse with an amazing self-content; and she brought him his beef-tea and port-wine at the stated intervals (for the good Doctor did not seem to have as much faith in drugs as might have been anticipated); and she kept the peat-fire piled up and blazing; and she methodically read to him the _Inverness Courier_, the _Glasgow Weekly Citizen_, and the _Edinburgh Scotsman_; and when these were done she would get out a volume of old ballads, or perhaps ’The Eve of St. Agnes,’ or ’Esmond,’ or ’As You Like It,’ or the ’Winter’s Tale.’ It did not matter much to him what she read; he liked to hear the sound of Meenie’s voice—in this hushed, half-slumberous, warm little room, while the chill north winds howled without, chasing