With a true instinct, though it is at variance with all the conventional customs of woe, Olive stole to the window and drew up the blind. The morning light was already in the sky, glowing on the old cathedral, ruddy even in its hoary eld. A bird started from its nest in the eaves and flew past the window with a cheery note. A sunbeam darted into the chamber; it fell athwart her father's face and rested on her mother's head.

Mrs. Sinclair rose calmly. at once to Robert,' she said.

We must send 'How terrible it

will be for him not to have been here!

Olive,

we must not let him get the blow from a cruel, bare telegram. Let us send the message to young Mr. Ollison, and so let the tidings reach the poor boy by a friend's voice.'

R

CHAPTER XII.

ROBERT SINCLAIR DRIFTS.

OBERT started off on his long journey to the North, at the earliest possible

opportunity after Tom took him the news of his father's death. Tom furthered him in all his preparations in awed silence. Robert himself said very little except, 'How sudden it was! it took one quite by surprise,found one quite unprepared.' Tom replied that he believed it always did, however long it had been looked for. Robert' wondered if his father himself had expected it, and whether he had made any arrangements, and, if so, what they were,' adding that there was little arrangement in his power to make. Tom remarked that he knew his own father had made every arrangement. He had told him so himself, and Tom had got him to explain more fully sundry wishes he had expressed.

On hearing this, Robert Sinclair had silently reflected that young Ollison was more acute

than some might think; one might have imagined that his feelings were too sensitive to allow him to probe deeply on such subjects. Robert could not dream that the 'arrangements' Tom had so carefully sought out did not so much concern the prospects of his own heirship as the pensioning of one or two old servants, the final provision for an old horse, and the disposal of the old chattels at Clegga, sacred in the son's eyes because they had surrounded the married life of his dead mother.

'I suppose you'll bring Mrs. Sinclair and Olive back with you, Robert,' Tom had ventured to say. Perhaps your mother will like to return to Stockley; I should not be surprised at that.'

'I can't tell yet what will be done,' Robert answered rather shortly. Of course there are so many things to be taken into consideration.' After Tom had seen young Sinclair off in the North train, as, for the sake of speed, he was to travel as far as possible by rail, Tom went into the Underground Railway station to make his own way back to his duties in Penman's Row. He had just missed a train, and there was scarcely anybody on the platform but himself. As he stood alone there, absorbed in grave reflections, he was startled to hear his

own name called, as it almost seemed, from the air, and in a voice which, though he did not recognise it, had yet an unmistakably familiar ring. As he looked round him in amaze, the call was repeated, accompanied by a light laugh. Hastily carrying his eye down the platform, it rested on the gleaming coloured crystal of the refreshment bar. Behind the counter stood a young woman, with her right hand eagerly held up.

Tom walked rather slowly towards her, wondering what she could want with him, and how she knew his name. The pink and white face, set off by a fluff of yellow hair and a pair of sparkling ear-rings, seemed quite strange to him. When, however, it brightened into a greeting smile, its identity dawned upon him. This was Kirsty Mail, strangely transformed indeed! Tom knew that she had carried out her intention of leaving Mrs. Brander's service, and also that she had not fulfilled her promise of letting him know what became of her.

'I beg your pardon for the liberty I took, Mr. Ollison,' said the girl as he came up to her. 'But it is such a treat to see a Shetland face, and I know you are not too proud to have a good word for an old acquaintance.'

Despite the affected humility of the words, Kirsty's tone was pert and her gaze bold; there

was a long distance and a wide experience between this Kirsty and the demure little maiden who had been Tom's fellow-traveller.

'Well, Kirsty,' he said, 'I'm glad to see you, but I can't say I'm glad to see you here.' Kirsty laughed hardly. Miss Chrissie Mail, if you please, Mr. Ollison,' she said. Kirsty is too familiar here. You see we young ladies get on in the world as well as you young gentlemen!

'Very well, Miss Mail,' assented Tom; 'so let it be. But what did your uncle think of the change in your course of life?'

Oh, I suppose you've heard that grannie is gone at last?' Miss Mail asked in return. Mr. Ollison of Clegga had mentioned that fact in one of his letters to his son. 'Well,' she pursued, uncle and I had a fall-out at that time. He wrote to me that he had had so much extra expense during her illness, that he thought I ought to help a little with her funeral. I told him I couldn't. I really couldn't, Mr. Ollison. I had not a sovereign of my own at the time. And men ought not to expect women to do that kind of thing.'

'Why not, Miss Mail?' asked Tom. 'Among women's "rights" have they no right to render love and duty?'