print in the basin startled the quiet of the basin, and stood at the head of the the place. The few eyes in it were pier, regarding the yacht which lay at turned upon her, and in a minute Les- the end of it. lie was at her side.

"Oh, Teddy," she said, giving him her hand. She spoke as if she had forgotten about him and his yacht; and she had forgotten.

"Isn't she a beauty?" Leslie said. "She's a trim little thing. A little heavily sparred, maybe - eh? — but I like her lines."

Julia put her head on one side, and

"Here on a Saturday, Julia! What's with a connoisseur's toss of it, "H'm,

wrong at Tarpow?"

She touched her basket: "Famine."

yes," she said; and she mocked his voice and words and critical air to a nicety.

For the first time he thought of more than himself and her comeliness, and was amazed at her cleverness. Poor young cub! She was only new to him. She wasn't clever. His own sisters, at the moment golfing on the other side of the Forth, had nimbler wits than she, by far.

Leslie was in a chronic excitement at the thought of Julia-a glorious girl like this, whom to see, he had to sail his yacht across the Forth. He was very much in love with the yacht, and he was very much in love with himself. Julia-the mere fact of Julia — ministered to both feelings. Besides, he was very young. "Was it famine in the land, or serves her name!" drought?" he asked.

"Bravo!" he cried. "Now she de

"What d'ye call her ?"
"The Julia."
"Julia?"

"Yes, Julia. Bob Pratt's painting it on her now."

There was a glowing anger in her. She was as little sensible as any country girl ought to be of the talk of the neighbors; but here- They had evidently gossiped to Leslie of her "Then Bob Pratt'll just paint it out father's frailty, as they might of the again," she said, leading the way down barrenness of Tarpow's land. Her the pier with a decision which Bob's father fought the barrenness with grin, as he looked up at her from his failing spirit, it is true; but he fought paint-pot, approved. The grin proit. He made no effort against the jected the popular opinion on the subother. The burden of that lay on ject. Julia's shoulders. Yet she had fought it, as she would have fought nettles in the field corners, or dandelions in the bleaching green, - steadily and impersonally. For the first time, now that Leslie took to hinting at the work, she was ashamed of the need of it.

"I was coming up this afternoon," Leslie went on, without awaiting an answer, and her anger fled. There was something in his boyish ways, his voice, and his looks, that responded to the new emotion of the morning.

Leslie, following her in chagrin, could only say :

"You must christen her, then." She had no nimbleness of wits to suggest a name on the instant, but she had nimbleness of manner. There was an old gin-bottle lying on the pierhead, and she stooped to it. Leslie picked it up for her, and, as they rose together, she saw something in his face that changed her intention.

"Oh! very well," she cried, and smashed the bottle on the yacht's bows: "I christen her the Julia."

It was the war of sense and sensibility. Her good sense was derived from the conditions of her life. Today, now that she was bursting into "womanhood, the conditions of her life bred sensibility.

Why! My father's at market." There was not a touch of coquetry in her manner of saying this, for she laughed, as much as to confess, "As if it were he you were coming to see." And he said, "I know he's away; and they laughed together. By this time they had walked round

But she would not stay longer. In

Julia among her poultry discovered a country girl with her rusticity rounded with a considerable elegance and knowledge, derived from her father in early days. It was her father's humor, not hers, that had named a flighty old hen

no case should she have allowed him | held to her side, lit up Julia herself in to accompany her; she did not care the middle of the rough-and-tumble that he should see what was her errand crowd of poultry she was feeding. to Mrs. Pratt's. To-day, -to-day all things were altered, their relationship among the rest. That which she saw in Leslie's face may have been the image of her own feeling. For her, at any rate, it changed everything between them; and, had she known it," Atalanta," and a combative cock with the reserve and withdrawal it led her to were the most potent steps she could have taken to affect him.

a very dissonant crow "Anacreon." But the fight with his land had so demoralized him now, that she had as little discernment of his better nature as of his ill condition.

She made her purchase, and soon was out upon the Tarpow road again. The heat was more suffused, the sun- Julia cleaned her fingers, all sticky shine a shade more golden. The wind with the hens' meat, on the side of the from the sea crept up behind her, near basin, and washed them in the overthe ground. The road was empty. flow of the horse-trough. Next she Yonder, on either side of it, Tarpow visited the calves' house, and went to and Broomielaws lay slumbering under the straw-loft to gather the eggs which their red-tiled nightcaps. There was the clucking hens announced. She a lull in her dissatisfaction -an inter-clambered up the straw massed in the back of the barn, and stood among the rafters. From there she looked down to some loose straw heaped on the floor in a soft bed. The memory of earlier days swam to her head.

lude of re-action, in which Tarpow and even Broomielaws wore a homely air. This grew upon her as she entered the house. Everything was as when she left. The doors stood open, the cattle browsed under the trees, the wind rustled delicately about the porch, and bore in upon her the fragrances of the earth. And to these things, which in the morning had hemmed her in with the tight grip of their familiarity, she turned now with a sense of restful

ness.

Her awakened womanliness, from which she was seeking escape, had touched into life in Leslie a new sensation. Bob Pratt dug about its roots and watered it with his gossip of the life old Tarpow led his daughter, and the marriage he sought for her. The new chivalry, love, call it what you will, sprouted like a mushroom, and Leslie was half-way to Tarpow before he could word his purpose.

From the end of the Tarpow road he caught a glimpse of Julia in the yard. The wind wound her print daintily about her lissom figure. She wore no hat above the straight hair wisped into a broad, flat coil. The sunlight swirling within the dish-red without, yellow within-which her arched arm

Man's life's a vapor, full of woes;
He cuts a caper, and off he goes,

she chanted, and clapped her hands,
and jumped down to the soft bed,
startling the sitting hens, which
clucked and beat their wings among
the rafters. She climbed and flopped,
and climbed and flopped again, until at
length she sank, hot and breathless and
laughing at the foot of the heap.
And there Leslie found her.

Her thoughts when he darkened the doorway were not of the wonder of his being there. She forgot that in her concern to account for her flustered condition. Then she did what the old Julia might have been expected to do at once. She told him how delightful it was to flop from the height of the straw, and showed him how it was done, and bade him follow her. And so, for a few minutes again, the barn was full of the sound of scared poultry, and of the rhymes jerked from these two breathless children, and of their smothered ejaculations.

Then the whole thing was spoiled. | come Broomielaws red, vast, middleaged, brutal. She had never thought of him so before, and she shut her eyes, and her mind's eye, on the horrid sight, and opened them upon the future Teddy painted. She would await their return, and Broomielaws' departure. By eleven o'clock the house would be quiet; then she would steal down to the jetty at the caves. She would be there, if she were coming at all, half an hour after midnight.

It was the old story; love is an instinct as well as a passion; and it was the instinct of love only that was work

with every step he took from Tarpow. He was not a very far-seeing hobbledehoy; but there are some things come up very close to the eyes, and an elopement with Julia was one of them.

At any rate, that is how the old Julia would have thought of it; she could never again be the old Julia. For over him, like the cloud-shadows scudding over the fields outside, swept the thought that this was not what he had come there for; and the thought swept on and shadowed her. His words outran his purpose. When he talked of ove she did not recognize it, so little had she thought of it or dreamed of it. All she knew was, that it was exactly what she had been waiting for-so satisfying to her there in his arms, with his kisses on her hot face. Why ing in these two. Leslie became wiser should she remain at Tarpow? Why, indeed? Tarpow was a prison; its ways, its very scenes, gripped at her heart now. And Broomielaws; her father would marry her to him to it rather. Oh, Teddy knew it all. All Torrie Town knew it, and perhaps St. Brise as well, - knew it from Tarpow's own lips, it seemed. At that thought she became conscious of herself, of her physical self, inch by inch, the body which she robed and could touch, as well as of this intangible thing within her that was quick to-day for the first time. This all this was to be sold by her father. He talked of the sale. Was he worth her care more? Was he worth the sacrifice of life? of love? For she saw them both now, or thought she saw them, — love and sacrifice.

It was Teddie's plan. The yacht lay at Torrie pier. They dared not sail from there; but he could moor the yacht in the bay to the eastwards, at the caves, and row Julia out to her from the jetty; and she should go with him, for always. He had no one in the world save her. There were his sisters, to be sure; but they would welcome her in the old house, on the other side of the Firth, where she might look over to the smoke of Torrie Town, but never again beat her wings against the bars, as at Tarpow. Julia might have known-at any other time would have known-how idle it all was. But to-day her whole being swam to the vision. She would await her father's return. With him would

"Here's a devil of a mess!" he was saying to himself at the main road turn; and by the time he got to Torrie pier the affair had become one of many devils. He had no thoughts of drawing back, however, but got on board, and stood up for the bay at the caves very bravely, and lay there, tossed about between his admiration for Julia and wrath for himself.

With Julia it was different. Her mood, such as it was, had come with a draught of spring which every atom of her body absorbed till it became newly constituted. The appetite of the woman, newly unchained by consciousness now, would have upleapt had not pressing duties kept it under. Julia had many things to attend to. Leslie's leave-taking had been hastened by the return of the ploughmen, which was irregular in this off-season of the year. The bothy-boys were hungry, and she had to make porridge to appease them, and the cows had to be milked. The return of her father with Broomielaws found her finishing her work calmly enough; but when she lifted her busy hand from off her agitation, it fluttered within her.

Tarpow took the beatings of it for the fulfilment of his instructions. The maid, he thought, had put off her perky ways, and was clothed in assent.

He

was seated as straight as an old man | house, she would have sent him to bed could be, close up to the table, brewing immediately, but he set himself on his toddy for himself and for Broomielaws, chair again.

The formality, and what he would have called the "Anglified" turn of his speech, registered the degrees of his insobriety

"Julia," he said, "you're like your mother to-night."

who lolled in the armchair with his "Sit down, Julia. Sit down, girl," long legs bent stiffly in frout of him he said. like a locust's, or a spinning-jenny's, thought Julia, as she set a bit of supper. Tarpow watched her out of the corner of his eyes. She had a large graciousness always that was something akin to grace; but to-night her bountifulness had a sparkle in it. Her A pompous exposition of the affair womanliness was in the bud. Tarpow of Broomielaws and herself was exactly had angled for Broomielaws artfully the thing for a drunken man to take up and persistently with the artificial lure and enjoy. Besides, domestic sentiof Julia's domestic virtues, and had ment is suited to one stage of intoxicafound him a lumpish biter at best. tion. When he said, "You're like That night Julia was a natural bait at your mother, Julia," this whiskey senwhich he came with a rush. That he timent was in his eyes and voice; and was a very ill-conditioned, unseason- Julia's condition made her peculiarly able fish mattered little to Tarpow, sensitive to any sentiment, even of the chuckling over the sport. The quarry limelights. was not a son-in-law, but a son-in-law's land; and Julia assenting was not a daughter angling for a husband, but a daughter in conspiracy with himself for Broomielaws?" five hundred acres.

"Father," she said, crossing to him and sitting on the floor at his feet, "do you really think I'm in love with

"You are well off having Broomielaws in love with you," he caught her up, with a laugh. "What is love?"

How easy it would be to answer that question! thought Julia.

Tarpow's sly grimaces and Broomielaws' ardor defeated their ends by spurring Julia in her resolve. On the other hand, her resolve was like to defeat itself, for its verve drew on "I've buffeted the warl' this six-andBroomielaws until the man was breath- sixty years," he went on, "and I'll tell less in his pursuit. When at length he you what love is. What's everything? rose to go, and her father went to the Just a yoke we yoke oursel's wi'. We door with him, both unsteady in saddle oursel's wi' duty. We put the their gait, she accompanied them. bit o' morality 'tween our own teeth. To both men the act seemed unusually Love?- just a pair o' blinkers, Jooley. gracious; they were not to know that Ah! we can keek round the corner, it was to see how the night fared that fine. We gang straight in front o's she went. Broomielaws' way lay across aince we've set our een in the proper the fields, Tarpow's and his own, airt and mak'-believe we see nothing and her father walked with him to the else. You've got your een set on edge of the yard. From there they Broomielaws-I saw it the nicht, watched the girl in the doorway who sensible lass the nicht, Jooley, -like was looking out upon the night. The your mother. Noo, jist put on the spring air still lingered; but, above, blinkers, and say, 'Broomielaws the the wind was high, and the moon drove inevitable! Mari'ge made in heaven.' across the sky through clouds. She My inevitable son-in-law Broomiefelt Broomielaws' eyes upon her. She laws!" burned a kiss upon her palm, and flung Her mood was such that her father's it towards the caves. She could not speech amused as much as it pained. know that she should have flung the She said, half to herself, "I have got kiss to herself. the blinkers on," and turned her eyes When her father re-entered the straight to the corner of the house that

faced the bay at the caves. That was hideous when he was in drink. She

in the direction of Broomielaws also, and the old man grinned.

had started running again, when a something in the heap caused her to "There's more nor a man there, return and look a little closer. The Jooley. There's fields, fat fields, but collar cutting the neck and cheeks was they maun be husbanded. I'll hus- redder than the cheeks and neck themband them. And you, Jooley, you'll selves. Accustomed as she was to husband love-it maun be husbanded accidents and wounds, she saw in an too. Paul may plant, and Apollos instant that he had fallen into the water, but if ye dinna manure. Broom- danger she had missed, and had struck ielaws! Mrs. Broomielaws! Young his head upon the coulter; and at the Broomielawses! — all inside the blink