Gilian The Dreamer

soon to hear

ilted petticoats or their tabinet gowns of Waterloo whose splendour kirk or market poorly revealed for the shawls that must cover them. The men donned their best figured waistcoats and their newest stocks, and cursed the fashions that took them from their pipes and cards, but solaced themselves mightily with the bottle in the host's bedroom. From those friendly convocations, jealousies innumerable bre

half-sister of the Turners. The Sheriff's servant had come up to the shop below the Paymaster's house early in the forenoon for candles, and Miss Mary chanced to be in

tation to the Sheriff's, and yet here was the hint of some convivial gat

John?" she asked the Paymaster,

e the Sheriff has an extra hard case at avizandum, not

dignant "People might slap you in the

though she was not permitted to see her annoyance. A plan was de

nd refreshment of the shady wood into the burgh street in the most intense days of summer warmth. She filled her stoups composedly, set them down and gossiped, upset them as by accident, and waited patiently her turn to fill

good enough company for Sheriff Maclachlan's supper parties! My brother the Cornal, and my brother the Major-General, would

, the other two brothers were unapproachable. Gilian found her in a little rain of tears. She started with shame at his discovery, and set herself to a noisy handling of dinner dishes that by this time he knew well eno

Gaelic, using the term it had been agre

r," she said without looking

n, alarmed lest he in some way should

thing only a woman would mind, a slight from people not wor

was a

" he said. "The last time you went to the Sherif

it's not myself I'm angry for. Oh, no! they might leave me alone for ever and a day and I would care not a pin-head, but it's Dugald I'm thinking of-a Major-General-one of the only three in the shire, and Colin-a Cornal-and both of Keils. The Sheriff's lady might leave me out of her routs if she pleasured it, but

and gleamed like the shining face of a Dutch skipper over his dram. "I know them; because my brother must b

" cried Gilian, won to the Paymaste

at all, and the Turners are not to blame because the Sheriff is under the thumb

l's cabin, shot over by a ray of sunshine, wherein a fairy sang of love and wandering. And then he regretted he had spoke of hate

warm, so lovely, so kind, so gifted

rners, father, or daughter, or son. Their daughter that you speak of was the cause of this new quarrel. The Capta

an, still in his Gaelic and i

hear her?" as

her inattentive nor without sympathy, he went further still and told of the song's effect up

takes them with her singing from her mother, who

y," said Gilian, remembering the tale of the sea-maiden who

ruagach combed till a sweetheart came (that I should be talking of suc

ian, "the gruagach was

with a sigh for a spir

the boy. Then she changed the conversation back to her own affairs. "We'll take a walk out in the gloaming and see all the

or its long roll on the Ramparts. A deserted and wind-swept street, its white walls streaming with waters, its outer shutters on the ground fiats barred to darkness, its gutters running over-it was the last night on which a

howed a moving light upon its footway. "Oh!" she cried. "There's Donacha Breck's lantern and his wife will be with him. And to-day she was at me for my jell

nship. It was an adventure altogether to his liking. As he walked up and down the street on its darker side he could think upon the things that were happening behind the drawn blinds and bolted shutters. It was as if he was the single tenant of a

ing faint radiance on the f

Lady Charlotte model and mantuas inspired by a visit to Edinburgh

r to Gilian, withdrawing hastily from the revelation of th

the blank expanse of the moaning sea round the corner of

now it has gone. It was there this morning, and I saw her lassie going by with a

morrow to ask some one who

arm with sta

even heard there was a party, I would-I would-be terribly vexe

the boy from ten

g darkened windows. "And the Camerons and the Frasers,"

ir homes behind. More dark than ever became the world, though the rain had ceased. Only a few windows shone wan

burgh's manhood, the salvage and the wreckage of the wars, privatemen and sergeants, by a period of strife and travel made in some degree unfit for the tame ways of peace in a stagnant burgh. They told the old tales of the bivouac; they sang its naughty or swaggering songs. By

ld maid's curiosity, he wished he could be home again and in his attic room with his candle and his story book, or his abundant and lively thoughts. But there was one other task before Miss Mary. She could not forbear so little as a glance at the exterior of the Sheriff's dwelling where the enemies of her h

e-lone, silent, sitting in a parlour! Oh! it is shameful

y from the place, but she would not go, and would not be comforted. Then there came from

t be singing at supper parties as brave as the mother before her. It's a scandal! And it sh

said Gilian, with a p

amiliar mood, a song of old loves, old summers, and i

er hands at the rail and leaning over as far as he c

en I heard her first I thought it was her mother, and that too her favourite song!

k with a shock upon a wet world with roads full of mire and a

for the first time the impropriety of this eavesdro

him too young to understand the outrage this must be on her every sense

," said she, "and grieve at any slight upon them, must I be spy upon my dead companion's child?" She hurried her pace away from that house whose windows stared in a dumb censure upon her humiliation. Gilia

e that girl

when she sin

re was, it lay with the providence that brought them together." Then she stopped a moment with a pitiful exclamation: "Oh! I was the instrument of providence in th

little lady walked up the street, now deserted but for themselves and a man's footsteps sounding on the flags. The man was on them before Miss Mary realised his coming. It was Mr.

a shrill high dainty accent that made him seem a foreig

is time he had found a reason for her lat

but I find myself something of the awkward stranger from the big worl

atest fashions are here from London sooner than they are in Edinburgh." She saw in his face the innkeeper's apology for his common si

u were at the Sheriff

able house and many friends. I must hurry home to my brothers, who, like all old gentlemen, are a l

ittle coquette that died in her twenty years befo

g walk, in which for once his mind was not on London town, and old friends there, but upon the o