Silvester-I mean Mr. Silchester-is much better and wiser than I am; but men do such rash things without consulting their wives, and I have always thought that brings on much of the trouble of the world."

"I suspect, my child," said the Squire gravely, "that the trouble of the world began when man and woman were created. But you, I can see, are rather impressed by the doctrines of Miss Alethea Fretful, who is in chronic mutiny against the position of women."

"She is a very able thinker," said Louisa, "and I correspond with her."

"You have read Gulliver's Travels, of course?" said the Squire, interrogatively abrupt.

66

Yes," she said, "aren't they very child

ish?"

"Too deep for you, Louisa, without some instruction. But we won't argue now. You are my daughter from to-day. Come up to Silchester this afternoon, and stay to dinner if

your uncle doesn't want you, and bring him if he will come . . . which he will if you coax him and tell him all about it. Remember, you have a mother as well as a father, now."

Louisa, looking at the Squire as he stood at this moment under a great oak tree-owner, she knew, of a great estate stretching for miles every way, yet willing at once to give his son to the girl he loved-could not help admiring the noble simplicity of the man. This girl had read and thought; had read novels and pseudophilosophy and pseudo-politics and pseudotheology and a myriad other things which attract an active female intellect; and from these studies she had gathered many false impressions which her own unusual clearness of sight had in a great degree corrected. Still prejudices remained. She retained some few of the follies of the girl who has been taught that Church and State are a mistake, that our ancestors were apes, that women ought to be independent of men, and that the modern

prophetess is, not, Joanna Southcote, but Alethea Fretful.

But when she saw the Squire, a mighty Englishman of heroic mould, lean against an oak which one of his fathers had planted, and smile pleasantly on her amid the summer sunshine, and treat her as a daughter without cavil or comment, she could not help recognizing his nobleness and her own silliness.

"Equal at toil and peril, romp and revel:

Had he feared God, he might have feared the Devil."

ATTY NUGENT, as his uncle liked

WATTY

to call him, was fearless and fearsome. To some extent he resembled the panther Cleopatra, gift of Hathor the Nubian; being most attractive and charming to a new acquaintance, yet suddenly developing a frightening faculty-showing his teeth, and growling -in a way that amazed weak minds, especially female minds. It is questionable whether there was perfect truth in 'the story he told his uncle of his reason for leaving England. It is doubtful whether he was at all afraid of Musical

VOL. I.

ΙΟ

Willie's rivalry with Jessy Blair of Elgin. It is doubtful indeed whether he and Jessie had not achieved an intimacy which rendered marriage a mere work of supererogation. Such notions entered not the brain of Willie Nairn, who received the truant as if he had been his own son, and made him at home, and introduced him to his good friends at Silchester, as we have seen. Everybody of the small circle welcomed him. The Squire and his son and daughter liked this new Odysseus; so likewise did Louisa. He found himself in capital quarters. At his uncle's, at Silchester, at Silchester Rectory, he was equally at home. After roughing it all over the world, imagine how pleasant a life for the wanderer. Odysseus himself having slain the suitors in Ithaca, and pottering about the island with his dear old father Laertes, could hardly have felt happier.

Watty was the most plausible of men, but Donald misliked him. Your Highlander has a