front of me a brawny European standing behind a dead horse, and keeping a group of howling Maori at bay with his rifle. There were four living and two dead, and I saw that those left were as determined to relieve the honest man of life's burden, as he was to carry it a little further. Just as he dropped from a bullet-wound I went into them at the gallop, and in a few seconds had, with my revolver, persuaded two of them to continue operations in another world; tickling the others in their flight with a little lead. The man on the ground was the good Ayrshire Scot to whom I was journeying. Luckily, it was only a leg wound, and he managed to stick on my horse for the remaining two miles of the distance.

"Well, that man was more than a father to me. I worked with him on the ranche for two years, when he took malarial fever and died; leaving me, as he had no relations, every cent of his money. I had a hankering after the old country; so sold out and shipped home. Having some business to transact in this quarter, and learning in Glasgow that my old chum, now one of a prominent firm of lawyers, was struggling through a holiday down here, I-yes, here I am." "And here you are welcome, old man."

"By the way," said Harley, "do you know Colonel Hodgson of Doon House?"

"Only by name," said his host, rising. He drew aside the window-curtain. "See, if you stand here you can just catch a glimpse of the roof through the trees."

"So you do. And yonder is the monument-dear old spot! Is it too late to walk round that way, Wingate?"

"Not a bit. We'll go for a stroll."

And round by the monument they went, the wanderer relating to his friend, all ears, the saga of his doings-of mighty enterprises and hairbreadth escapes, adventures by sea and field. The tongue flashed from world to world. The transit of the universe was nothing to this dark-eyed youth from the bush-this weather-tanned man of thews and sinews. They walked up the Maybole road, turning as the moon opened magic on the night.

"Yes," Harley was saying, "Colonel Hodgson is my uncle. I'm going to visit him to-morrow-not as the man of fortune, but as the hungry heir-expectant. I want to see how the old fire-eater would treat me if I really were at his mercy. Chiefly, I want to learn how he has behaved to my cousin Nelly. He's her uncle, too, and her

guardian. Nelly and I were lovers in the dead days, and she used to say that if she lost her mother she'd rather die than and ministers of grace! What's that?"

Angels

They were crossing the bridge at the monument inn. Harley clutched his friend's arm fiercely, and the two men peered, spellbound, up the river. There, on the very auld Brig o' Doon itself, shadowed by the trees, but streaked by one thin moonlight thread, stood a tall white figure, making strange signs with its arms-weird, slow movements, suggestive of things unearthly.

"Stoleaway! By the ghost of Tam o' Shanter! I follow thee! Wait there, Wingate."

Harley shot along the river-bank, and was lost to sight. Wingate strove to pierce the gloom of the dense foliage, as he heard him. crash and blunder through the shrubbery. The sounds circulated and came back. Harley scrambled to the road, breathing hard and displaying torn garments.

"The the strangest thing alive-or-or dead," he panted. "Got quite close, and thought I had it when the ghastly thing disappeared."

"And you haven't brought back even a hair of auld Meg's tail? Most disappointing!"

"Well, it's feminine. I'll stake my life on that. So, next time I leave the pleasures of the chase to you."

Wingate was a bachelor-a bachelor on holiday, and at his friend's service. Together they visited Doon House on the following day. To casual observation the Colonel seemed, on the whole, pleased to see his nephew again, but there was one whose keen scrutiny the first involuntary flash of sinister unwelcome did not escape. Standing in the shade, Wingate, between half-shut eyes, measured the man in the moment of his approach.

"Liver gone-cruel-indomitable-martinet," was the verdict. Conversation ranged, until someone came in from the garden, blushing rosily, and somebody's heart began to play a frantic quickstep on his side. Wingate remarked the tones of almost fawning affection in which the Colonel addressed his niece, and sought to reconcile them with the verdict. A picnic to Crossraguel Abbey being arranged for the following day, they were about to leave when Harley burst out:

"Oh, I forgot! We saw a ghost last night."

"Stuff, man! That's your Colonial imagination."

"No fear. It was alive, alive O! On the Brig o' Doon, too. Wingate will corroborate."

"Eh-what?" blurted the Colonel.

"On the auld Brig? Don't

talk nonsense, Frank. Smoke, Mr. Wingate? Ha! I'll give you a fine Indian weed for the walk home."

"Shall I—I—oh, yes I'll get them!" stammered his niece, vanishing.

Coming down the avenue, Harley, airily, between puffs: "Jolly girl that-eh?"

"M-yes."

"And what else, anatomist ?"

"A thoughtful girl and-and a troubled girl. How is she provided for? That's important."

"Her mother left her entire fortune to the Colonel, with the provision that Nelly should receive five hundred pounds a year, and ten thousand as marriage portion."

"So that if this girl were to die your uncle would net, saving annual, five hundred, saving prospective, ten thousand?"

"Ye banks and braes! What's the man driving at? D'you mean to say

"

"That your cousin might tell you something of last night's-erMaid of Doon."

There are men who throw out their words, crisp and clear, from the chest, and with such evident relish that, instinctively, you feel that they are braining, as well as tongueing, them-nay, more, that the silver utterances are Hall-marked of the heart. And Wingate, with his mild, clean-shaven face and quiet, decisive manner, was one of these. Men learned this; hence his reputation. Harley had been ruminating.

"Wingate, you're an enigma."

"Don't call names. Didn't you notice anything striking to-day?" "Yes; I thought my uncle changed colour when I mentioned the ghost incident. That was all."

"Well, that was something. But I saw stranger things in your cousin's face, and how, on a rather transparent pretext, she hurried from the room."

"Then, O riddle-reader! until the riddle be read, we'll nightly visit the glimpses o' the moon."

It was a merry drive next day in right merry weather. Nelly had hunted up some young friends, male and female, from Ayr, and the richly-coloured country, the delightful interruptions by the way, the old-fashioned town of Maybole, and, at last, the truly picturesque ruins of the ancient abbey made summer of living.

Crossraguel has a pretty story of its own, and its impression was not unfelt by the party that picnicked in the grass-grown chancel,

the blue heavens arching their roof. Only once did Harley find his cousin alone. It was when they had climbed the one remaining tower, and he held her hand as she peeped, cautiously, over the giddy edge. "Nelly," he said, hurriedly, "I want to ask you something. Tell me-has he been-is he good to you-as kind as you deserve?" "Oh, Frank, don't ask me that!"

She turned a sad, pleading face towards him. In that moment her eyes had filled.

"Nelly, I've come to help you. You must"Oh, don't-please don't! See! he's watching us. Go over there, quick."

Immediately afterwards she ran down the stairs, and her laugh was heard above them all. But Harley was thinking-he who was not given to thinking except when it could not be helped. Wingate stuck to the Colonel like a leech, and well Harley knew that the leech was drawing blood. That night the Maid of Doon did not present herself on the Brig, nor for a full week to come. Then, circumstances being similar, she again appeared. Harley's course was determined. "Now, old man," said he, "be swift. I'll cut off retreat. You take exactly the course I did last time. Wait here, now. hear my cuckoo-call, swoop."

When you

Move as he might, the shrubbery, the dry undergrowth, the roosting birds spoke loudly of the disturber, and sent warning on the night as they tracked him. Harley saw his prey slipping, gave the sign on the instant, and, henceforth abandoning all attempts at stealth, bounded forward with redoubling din. He could see Wingate's form darting by the moon-bright water toward the bridge. During judicious pauses he noted with satisfaction that the apparition was substantial and not of air, in that its movements were chronicled even as his own. He stood still now, well concealed behind a bush. The apparition was reckless. A lightning spring or two, and Harley held the dread thing fast! There was a distinctly feminine scream.

"Let me go. How dare you?”

"Nelly, it isn't-it isn't any use. Do you think I don't know you even in this guise?"

The ghost fell sobbing on his shoulder.

"Oh, Frank! Frank! you don't know all."

"Nelly! Nelly! D'you hear? Don't cry like that. Bless me you're you're all trembling. Let me take off that white thing. What's the matter? Darling, I've a right to know."

"In heaven's name, don't ask-don't ask! Oh, if you ever cared for me, let me go!" She half raised the white covering on her

head, peering with wet eyes at a dim-lit window of the house that showed through the foliage. The hand on his arm trembled violently.

"If he should suspect-if he should trace me-oh, Frank, if he should find me here, he'd-he'd kill us both-kill us-kill us!"

CHAPTER II.

"So, after all, she told you nothing? H'm! Rather a wild-goose chase!"

"My dear fellow, I didn't want to have a real ghost in my arms. The girl was out of her wits. But how did you know it was her? You seemed cock-sure in the matter."

"Tolerably certain, yes. My methods of deduction made me so. Now, before taking further steps, do you mean to marry the girl?" "You're point-blank, but that is the business that brought me here."

"Then, in that event, and only because your cousin is more to you than your uncle, I take your case. I have made a careful study of such cases, and here I see great danger in delay. Therefore, whilst carefully avoiding anything that might arouse suspicion in your uncle's mind, you must discover, through your cousin, whether he takes an interest in, or gives any instructions regarding, her sleeping apartment."

Harley promised. "I'm dazed," he said, "but I'll go on, in faith."

So the excursion went on apace. There were drives to Dunure the quaint, to the lovely glen of Ballochmyle, and the countless other beauty-nooks that make the very name of Ayr a kind of spell. There were golf matches at Troon and golf matches at Prestwick. Festivity perpetual-and all the while the thickening plot; and all the while the unravelling. Walking homeward one night, Wingate said to his friend :

"You had an opportunity to-day. Did you take it by the forelock?"

"Yes, but what I fished was so minnowy that it's hardly worth mentioning."

"Everything's worth mentioning to a lawyer when you're his

client."

"Well, it was simply that he insists upon Nelly sleeping with the