thought I was halting between two opeenions, and I wouldn't like to go back again. If it was myself only to think of, I'm sure I'd be quite happy to join the chapel, but ye see, Mr. Allardyce, I canna conter my father."

Mr. Allardyce made no answer. He had many thoughts on the subject, which he would not have found easy to put into words. Besides, he was not blessed with a superabundance of words at any time; and he was not at all wishing to preach to Isie, or to let her suppose that he was specially interested in her conversion. So they finished their short walk in silence, for they had now reached their respective homes, and parted company with a demure "Good night."

They were near neighbours: Edmund Allardyce occupied two small rooms over a tailor's shop, which was next door to the old watchmaker's. I do not know that this contiguity of dwelling made them more of friends than they would otherwise have been, for they never met in the course of their ordinary every-day life. But to a certain extent next-door neighbours must know more about each other than those who dwell further apart; and Isie had one advantage over her neighbour in that she could generally tell when he was at home, whether she wished it or not, by the sound of his harmonium.

Edmund Allardyce was fond of music, not only in his official capacity as choirmaster of S. Adamnan's. He was wont to beguile his leisure hours with it, and had taken to himself a very small harmonium, on which he was teaching himself to play. It was very humble playing, even more so than Isie's, for he had had no instruction, and began too late in life to hope to attain to any great proficiency. Still it was an amusement to him, and a very harmless one, and though he would have been far too diffident to attempt to accompany in church, he was not without hope of fitting himself to play, at a pinch, for the choir to practise.

Any stranger going along the street of the little Scotch village might have been surprised to hear bits and scraps of church song, Gregorian chants, fragments of Hymns Ancient and Modern, pealing out above the tailor's shop, although such of the neighbours as were within hearing were well accustomed to it, and took as little account of "th' agent's

harmonnium" as of the more prosaic clack and whirr of Mr. Ross's sewing-machine down below. Isie liked to hear the harmonium sounding as she went about her household work, or drove her sewing-machine. She thought it was cheery and pleasant, and the tunes reminded her of the practisings and the Sunday evenings, which were among the happiest hours now of her lonely, hard-working life. Her father used now and then to grumble and sneer at " yon precentin' chap aye booming and buzzing awa'," though she could not help thinking that in his secret heart he did not dislike the music so very much. She often envied the player his leisure for practising, as, though the church harmonium was always accessible to her, she had little spare time to avail herself of Mr. Wood's permission to practise whenever she liked.

Poor Isie certainly was quite innocent of wishing to act the part of a rival to Christina Cameron. No doubt she considered Mr. Allardyce a pattern churchman, a firstrate musician, and altogether a very exalted and enviable personage, but the fact of his engagement was patent, and she knew besides that he would never think for a moment in that way of any one who did not belong to his own Church. While as for Edmund Allardyce himself he was too thoroughly in love with his pretty little imperious Christina to think it possible that he should be even supposed to have a thought for any one else.

CHAPTER III.

DR. MILNE.

LOVERS' quarrels are proverbially said to be the renewing of love; and though Edmund Allardyce would by no means have admitted the episode of Saturday evening to be a quarrel, he was yet sufficiently anxious to make his peace with Christina to take the first opportunity of doing so.

He did not meet her on Sunday church before the choir came out.

morning, as she had left In the evening he fully

intended to walk home with her; but here fate was unpropitious. The singing had gone badly-one tune coming to grief altogether, owing to one of the choir having been absent when it was rehearsed, and it was therefore necessary to go over it after service. This, and some other little arrangements for the next Sunday occupied some time, and it was much later than he intended when, a little tired, and disheartened by the non-success of his labours, Edmund Allardyce at length turned his steps in the direction of Braehead Farm.

Arriving at the gate, he found, tied thereto by the rein, a saddled horse--a lank weedy chestnut, with a dash of good breeding about its head and neck, and very unmistakable signs of hard work about its legs. He had very little doubt about the ownership, and consequently was the less surprised to find Dr. Milne, who had recently opened a rival practice in Inverranna, sitting in the parlour with Mr. and Mrs. Cameron and Christina. Quite at home there also it would appear, as, however professionally the visit had begun, it had evidently relapsed into a very sociable chat, the doctor condescending to sip a glass of Mrs. Cameron's gean1 whisky, and to partake of her homemade shortbread.

Dr. Milne was a man of about twenty-seven; tall and slim, with rather a fine figure, set off to great advantage, in his own estimation, by a light grey tweed shooting-jacket, trousers to match, and very shiny boots and gaiters his appearance being further enhanced by a brilliant violetcoloured necktie, a showy scarf-pin, and a handsome rose in his buttonhole. The prevailing expression of his face, which was fair, with a clear slightly florid complexion, was shrewd a different kind of shrewdness from Edmund Allardyce's an expression, with the rather sharp features, cold blue eyes, and curling red moustache and whiskers, which somehow made one think of a fox. Very smoothmannered and smooth-tongued, with a would-be refinement, which would fain, if it could, have dropped all traces of his native dialect. He was wont to carry about him subtil odours of musk and pomatum and scented soap-very different from the atmosphere of honest tobacco which hung about Edmund Allardyce.

1 Wild cherry.

Christina received her lover agreeably enough. She was only partly divested of her church-going finery, having removed her bonnet, thereby displaying a wonderful erection of hair, tier upon tier, crowned by a profusion of little curls. Not nearly so becoming as a simpler style, but still she had the art of always looking pretty-and so Edmund Allardyce admitted to himself, as he expressed in a sort of aside to her his regret at not having been able to come up earlier, and the cause of the delay.

"There'll have been a good many people at the chapel to-night," observed Dr. Milne, blandly.

"I've seen more," Christina said. "By the bye, what was come over the singers the night? I thought they were going to give out altogether," with a sort of giggle at Edmund. "I hope you scolded them all round afterwards."

"O ay, it's you that's precentor, isn't it?" said the doctor.

"I'm just all that's for him," answered Edmund, modestly. He did not particularly care to discuss the singing in the present company. It was a tender subject with him, and was apt, as has been seen, to be a sore subject with Christina, who was rather fond of saying sharp things about it, not being understanding in the matter.

He did not take much part in the conversation until the other visitor, having sufficiently regaled himself, rose to depart, causing a general rise of the party-the old people civilly coming out to the door.

"And Maggie mustn't go without a piece," said Christina, appearing armed with a huge triangular bannock of oat-cake for the horse. Apparently it was not the first "piece" Maggie had got at that gate, as she lifted her head and neighed when she saw Christina.

66

You are too kind, Miss Cameron," said the doctor, Maggie's growing quite petted."

Then there was a smiling farewell all round, and Dr. Milne leapt gracefully into his saddle and rode away, giving poor Maggie, who would have been only too happy to take things quietly, a sly touch with his heel to make her show off.

Silly little Christina looked on with admiring eyes. "He's quite the gentleman," she thought to herself; "poor

Edmund's nothing but a muckle red-faced farmer-looking chiel aside him ;" and yet if any one else had said so, she would have been the first to be affronted.

Though generally full of lively talk, she seemed, from whatever reason, a little embarrassed to-night when they were again by themselves. She would not stay out with Edmund in the garden, as he evidently wished her to do; and indoors she had so little to say, that she felt it quite a relief when her father came in to talk of "horses, pleughs, and kye," and discuss the last case of pleuro-pneumonia, and rumour of "foot and mouth," and at length carried Edmund off to look at the three parts bred "powney," (a handsome young roadster of fourteen hands,) which had gained the extra prize, two years running, at the Rannaside Union Show. Then they went and looked at the corn, full and deep and yellow, just ready for cutting: old Cameron walking on, with his head down and his hands behind him, and his long slow step, not without a sort of consciousness, as if he was ill at ease in his Sunday clothes; while Allardyce, who had the art of wearing his Sunday clothes as naturally as his weekday ones, walked beside him with his hands in his pockets, at the same sauntering pace, though he could at no time be accused of slouching.

Edmund Allardyce was a born farmer, and well up in all agricultural matters, as his present calling required of him; though he would have been the same from choice. His parents were dead; but his eldest brother, who was married, still carried on the farm where all the family had grown up, and Edmund always spoke with as much affection of "Fernytofts" as if he had still a personal concern therein.

He suited old Cameron remarkably well as a companion, and the old man liked nothing better than a long "crack" with his future son-in-law on all matters dear to the agricultural mind: Edmund not unfrequently rallying him goodhumouredly on the superiority of his side of the country to Rannaside, where the first crop off a newly "impruvved" piece of land was invariably of huge boulders of stone.

But Edmund too, from whatever reason, was certainly more silent than usual to-night, venturing on few remarks of his own, and giving but short answers to those thrown out by his companion. When they had finished their tour

C