Sore were the conflicts between them. The girl delighted in annoying him, for she was as wilful and cruel as she was beautiful. She would dance with the others, and she would flirt with them to the point of driving the poor man mad, and then, just at the nick of time, she had a trick of coming back to him, and for a time being as sweet as possible, and so for several years she kept him alternating between the seventh heaven of happiness, and the lowest depths of a hell upon earth. There was one fellow in the neighborhood as much smitten with her as Jamie, who was determined to marry her, whether or no. He was a well-to-do young man, who had a farm of his own, and being quite as good-looking and more enterprising than Jamie, was a most dangerous rival to the hapless youth. Jennie had dismissed all the others, but with the perversity that seems to be an infallible accompaniment to beauty, she persisted in receiving the attention of this man. Finally it came to a head. Jamie insisted that she should not see him any more, and he insisted upon it with an earnestness that affected the girl, and she made a solemn promise that she never would see him again. It so happened that the very next day after this promise was asked and given, Jamie was to leave for Glasgow on business, and he started early the next morning. He hadn't got to the railroad station before his mind misgave him. Something worried him. He had slept all the night comfortably on her promise, but something told him that she did not intend to keep it, and that something preyed upon him to the degree that instead of proceeding on his journey he turned about and walked back. She knew that he was going to be gone a week, and the other man knew it also. If she intended to play him false, this was her opportunity, and he would know for certain, and set his mind at ease. Poor devil! It would have been better had he proceeded on his journey. For if he had known anything he would have known that if a woman wanted to deceive him, watching her would amount to nothing. The devil is very lavish of opportunities, that being all that he has to do, and simple human nature is certain to avail itself of them; but Jamie was not a philosopher, or a very bright man. He was a simple Scotch lad, frightfully in love with a wilful and perverse beauty. [Sidenote: HOW IT ENDED.] But he did go back, and he concealed himself near her cottage, where he could watch unobserved, hoping, in a desperate sort of way, that he had made a fool of himself, but rather certain that he had not. And sure enough, along toward evening his rival made his appearance sauntering down the road, and sure enough he had no sooner appeared in the road than Jennie, as if by accident, appeared, and the two talked across the little gate in front, very earnestly, she in a mixed sort of way.