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What a simple thing this is - the easiest | ment of wealth, by loving cost almost

in the world! If ye were not all a poor, little, cautious set of people, you would do the same. Not afford it? Pooh! a bagatelle like that! All this was in the laugh, which was even more eloquent than la langue Turque. There were sure to be some sensitive people who did not like it; but they were very hard to please. And the rich man was in fact so truly kind and willing to make everybody comfortable, that the most sensible even of the sensitive people forgave him. And as the majority in society is not sensitive when its own advantage and pleasure is concerned, his house was always full of visitors, among whom he moved briskly, always pleased, always endeavoring to elicit the expression of a wish which he could satisfy. Katie took less trouble. She was less conscious of being rich. She was willing to share all her own advantages, but it did not appear to her, as to her father, half so ridiculous that other people should not be rich. The house was always full of visitors staying there, and there was not a day that there were not neighbors dropping in to lunch or invited to dinner, keeping up a commotion which delighted Mr. Williamson and amused Katie, who was to the manner born, and understood life only in this way. It hap pened thus that it was into a large party that Walter, coming with a sense that he was under the dominion of fate, and was about to settle the whole tenor of his life, plunged unaware. He heard the sound of many voices before he had got near the great drawing-room, the door of which stood open, giving vent to the murmur of talk from about twenty people within. He had scarcely ever gone up so magnificent a staircase, broad, and light, and bright as became a new palace, with footmen moving noiselessly upon the thick pile of the carpets.

"There is a party, I suppose?" he said, hesitating.

"No more than usual, my lord," said the elegant functionary in black, who was about to announce him, with a bland and soft smile of superiority and a little pity like his master's for the man who knew no better, "Two or three gentlemen have dropped in to lunch."

The drawing-room was a large room, with a huge round bow-window giving upon the loch. It was furnished and decorated in the most approved manner, with quantities of pretty things of every costly description: for Katie, like her father, betrayed the constitution and tempera

more than beauty. She was, however, too well instructed to be led into the mistake of making that luxurious modern room into the semblance of anything ancient or faded, while Mr. Williamson was too fond of everything bright and fresh to be persuaded even by fashion into such an anachronism. There was a faint suspi cion in the mirrors and gilding and all the conveniences and luxuries, of the style of grandeur peculiar to the saloon of a splendid steamer, to which the steamyacht, which was the chief object in the immediate prospect as seen from the plate-glass window, gave additional likelihood. Walter for his part was strangely startled, when, out of the seriousness of his own lonely thoughts, and the sense of having arrived at a great crisis, he suddenly stepped into the flutter and talk of this large assembly, in which some halfdozen neighbors on the loch, most of them young men in more or less attendance upon Katie, mingled with strangers of all classes whom Mr. Williamson had picked up here and there. There was a little pause in the hum of voices at his own name, and a slight stir of interest, various of the guests turning round to look as he came in. The master of the house advanced with a large hand held out, and an effusive welcome; but the little lady of Birkenbraes paid Walter the much greater compliment of pursuing her conversation undisturbed, without betraying by a movement that she knew he was there. Katie was not rude. It was not her habit to pay so little attention to a new-comer: she was profoundly conscious of his entrance, and of every step he made among the groups distributed about; but as the matter was a little serious, and his appearance of some importance, she showed a slight stir of mind and thoughts, which could scarcely be called agitation, in this way. It was only when her father called loudly, "Katie, Katie, do you not see Lord Erradeen?" that she turned, not moving from her place, and suddenly held out her hand with a smile.

"How do you do? I heard you had come," said Katie; and then returned to her talk. "As for the influence of scenery upon the mind of the common people, I think it has more influence in the Highlands than anywhere, but very little when all is said. You don't think much of what you see every day, unless, indeed, you think everything of it. You must be totally indifferent, or an enthusiast," said the philosophical young lady.

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Walter meanwhile stood before her, | ial member. "That will indeed be to almost awkwardly, feeling the rigidity gather knowledge at the fountain head." upon his countenance of a somewhat unmeaning smile.

"And to which class does Miss Williamson belong?" said her companion, who was a virtuous young member of Parliament, anxious to study national peculiarities wherever he might happen to be. "To neither," said Katie, with a slight coldness, just enough to mark that she did not consider herself as one of the common people." And she turned to Walter with equally marked meaning, "Have you seen the Forresters since you came, Lord Erradeen?

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"I know," said Katie, with greater cordiality. "You speak as if I wanted you to account for yourself. Oh, no! only one must begin the conversation somehow unless I plunged you at once into my discussion with Mr. Braithwaite (Mr. Braithwaite, Lord Erradeen) about the characteristics of the inhabitants of a mountain country. Do you feel up to it?" she added, with a laugh.

"But you avoid the question," said the member of Parliament. "You say 'neither.' Now, if it is interesting to know what effect these natural phenomena have upon the common mind, it is still more interesting when it is a highly cultivated intelligence which is in question."

"Help me out!" cried Katie, with a glance at Walter. "I have never been educated no woman is, you know. How are we to know what the highly cultured 'feel? Papa is not cultured at all he does not pretend to it, which is why people approve of him; and as for me!" she spread out her hands like a sort of exclamation. "And Lord Erradeen cannot give you any information either," she added demurely, "for he has not known the loch very long-and I think he does not like it. No, but you shall see one who can really be of some use this afternoon. Don't you think she is the very person, Lord Erradeen? Oona - for she has lived on the loch, or rather in the loch, all her life."

"And when shall I see this-nymph is she, or water-goddess?" said the gen

"Do you think we may say she is a nymph, Lord Erradeen? Oh yes what do you call those classical ladies that take care of the water-naiads? Oona is something of that sort. But better than the classics, for she has water above and water below for a great part of the year. You don't know how many superstitions we have remaining in this wild part of the country. We have ghosts, and wandering Jews, and mysterious lights: Lord Erradeen will tell you

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Katie paused with the malice bright in her eyes. She did not mean to affront the recovered attendant who might turn out a suitor, and upon whom it was possible she might be induced to smile; so she paused with a little laugh, and allowed Braithwaite to break in.

"Do you call this a wild part of the country, Miss Williamson? Then what must the cultivated portions look like? I see nothing but beautiful villas and palaces, and all the luxuries of art."

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"The comforts of the Saut Market," said Katie with a shrug of her shoulders. "It is more easy to carry them about with you than in Bailie Nicol Jarvie's time. But there is luncheon! Papa is always formal about our going in, though I tell him that is out of date nowadays. you must wait, if you please, Lord Erradeen, and take me." There was then a pause, until, as they brought up the rear of the procession down-stairs, Katie said, with the slightest pressure on his arm to call his attention, "That is a member of Parliament in search of information and statistics. If you hear me talk more nonsense than usual you will know why."

"Do you expect Miss Forrester this afternoon?" asked Walter, quite irrelevant.

Katie's heart gave a little jump. She did not like to be beat. It was the healthful instinct of emulation, not any tremor of the affections. She gave him a keen glance, half of anger, half of enjoyment, for she loved a fray.

"Better than that," she cried gaily, "we are going down to the loch to see her. Don't you remember Mrs. Forrester's scones, Lord Erradeen? You are ungrateful, for I know you have eaten them. But you shall come, too."

If this had been said on the stairs, Walter, probably, would have given a dignified answer to the effect that his engagements would scarcely permit - but they were by this time in the dining-room

colored still more, and a slight movement showed itself along the table, which Mr. Braithwaite, the knowledge-seeker, being newly arrived, did not understand. Tom cried hastily, "I beg your pardon," and many eyes were turned with sudden interest upon Lord Erradeen. But this was what Walter had anticipated as little as the Parliamentary inquirer. He grew so red that Tom Campbell's healthy blush was thrown into the shade. "I ought rather to say," he added hastily, "that my time here is too short for amusement."

in the little flutter of taking places which | "I have other work in hand," Walter always attends the sitting down of a said; at which young Tom stared and party, an operation which Katie, with little rapid indications of her pleasure, simplified at once; and Walter found himself seated by her side and engaged in conversation by the enterprising Braithwaite at his other hand before he could utter any remonstrance. Mr. Braithwaite set it down in his journal that Lord Erradeen was a dull young fellow, petted by the women because he was a lord, no other reason being apparent and wondered a little at the bad taste of Miss Williamson who ought to have known better. As for Katie, she exerted herself to smooth down Walter's slightly ruffled plumes. There was no use, she thought, in handing him over at once to Oona by thus wounding his amour propre. She inquired into his travels. She asked where he had disappeared when they all left

town.

"I expected we should find you at Auchnasheen for the 12th," she said. "You are the only man I know who is philosopher enough not to care for the grouse. One is driven to believe about that time of the year that men can think of nothing else."

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There was an uneasy little pause, and then everybody burst into talk. Both the silence and the conversation were significant. Lord Erradeen turned to Katie with an instinctive desire for sympathy, but Katie was occupied, or pretended to be so, with her luncheon. It was not here that sympathy on that point was to be found. "I wonder,” said Katie, somewhat coldly, "that you do not remain longer when you are here. Auchnasheen is very nice, and you ought to know your neighbors, don't you think, Lord Érradeen? If it is merely business, or duty, that brings you

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"I wish I knew which it was," he said in a low tone.

Perhaps, Katie," said young Tom of Ellermore, "if you were to speak to Lord Erradeen, whom we don't know as yet, as Katie turned and looked at him with we have never had the chance of calling "those eyes of common sense in which (here the young men exchanged bows, ac- there is always a certain cynicism. companied by a murmur from Katie, "Mr. Tom Campbell, Ellermore," while the color rose in young Tom's cheek), "perhaps he would be charitable to us others that are not philosophers."

"Have ye not enough grouse of your own, Tom Campbell?" cried Mr. Williamson, who, in a pause of the conversation, had heard this address. "Man! if I were you I would think shame to look a bird in the face."

"I did not think in this century," she said, "that it was possible for any man not to know why he was doing a thing; but you perhaps like to think that an old family has rules of its own, and ought to keep up the past."

"I should think," said Mr. Braithwaite, not discouraged by the lower tone of this conversation, "that the past must have a very strong hold upon any one who can suppose himself a Highland chieftain."

"A Highland chief!” cried Katie, open

"And why?" cried the young fellow; "that was what they were made for. Doing her brown eyes wide: and then she you think otherwise that they would laughed, which was a thing strangely allowed to breed like that, and eat offensive to Walter, though he could everything that grows? scarcely have told why.

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"Heather," said the head of the house, "and bracken. Profitable crops, my word!"

Here Walter interrupted the discussion by a polite speech to young Tom whose eyes blazed with pleasure and excitement at the offer made him.

"But I hope," he said, "you will join us yourself. It will be like stealing a pleasure to have such an enjoyment, and the master of it not there."

"I fear," he said coldly, "that though I am to some extent a Highland laird, I have no pretension to be a chief. There is no clan Methven that I ever heard of: though indeed I am myself almost a stranger and of no authority."

"Mrs. Forrester will tell you, Mr. Braithwaite," said Katie. "She is a sort of queen of the loch. She is one of the old Macnabs, who once were sovereign here. These people," she said, waving

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her hand towards the various scions of | of fir-trees was reflected and beautified in the great clan Campbell, "are mushrooms the still water, that broke with a ripple the in comparison: which is a comfort to our fantastic doubling of every substance, but feelings, seeing that we sink into insig. nificance as creatures of to-day before them. The very original people are highly consolatory to the upstarts, for we are just much the same as the middling-old people to them. They are worlds above us all."

Here Tom of Ellermore leaned over his immediate neighbors and reminded Katie that the days were short in October, and that it was a stiff row to the isle: and the conversation terminated in the hurried retirement of the ladies, and selection of rugs and wrappers to make them comfortable. Mr. Williamson had, as he said, "more sense," than to set out upon any such ridiculous expedition. He stood and watched the preparations with his thumbs stuck into the armholes of his waistcoat.

"Ye had much better take the yacht," he said. "She could get up steam in half an hour, and take you there in ten minutes, and there is plenty of room for ye all, and the cabin in case of rain. But as ye like! A wilful man will have his way. If ye would rather work yourselves than have the work done for ye- and a shower in prospect! But it's your own affair.”

The party, however, preferred the boats, and Katie put her father's remonstrance aside with a wave of her hand.

"It is all these boys are ever good for," she said, "and why would you stop them? Besides, it is far nicer than your mechanical steam, and tea on board, and all the rest of it. Lord Erradeen, you are to steer. If you don't know the currents I can tell you. Here is your place beside me: and you can tell me what you have been doing all this time, for there were so many interruptions at lunch I got no good of you," the young lady said.

lent a glory to the color and brilliancy of every outline. The gay party swept along over the reflected woods, themselves all brilliant in reflection, and making the loch as gay as a Venetian canal. On the little landing-place at the isle the whole small population was collected to meet them. Mrs. Forrester, in her white cap, shivering slightly, and glad to draw round her the fur cloak which Mysie was putting on her shoulders from behind, "for the sun has not the strength it once had," she explained, "now that we are just getting round the corner of the year: " Hamish, always in his red shirt, kneeling on the little wooden landing which he had wheeled out to receive the party, in order to catch the prow of the first boat; and Oona, a little apart, standing looking out, with a faint thrill of excitement about her, consequent on having just heard the news of Walter's arrival, but no expectation to make this excitement tangible. They made a pretty show upon the little beach, reflected, too, in the clear depths below the bit of ribbon on the mother's cap, the knot of pale roses on Oona's breast, culminating in Mysie's stronger tints on one side, and the red of Hamish's garment on

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It was perhaps at this moment, when he' was listening with a somewhat distracted look, smiling against the grain, and standing up in the boat to steer, that Oona saw him first. It cannot be denied that the shock was great. In her surprise she had Thus Walter was swept along in Katie's almost made a false step on the slippery train. As he was quite unaware of any shingle, and Mrs. Forrester grasped her understanding between the girls, he was dress with an "Oona! you'll be in the of course ignorant that any special signifi- water if you don't take more care." Oona cance could attach to his arrival in this recovered herself with a blush, which she manner at the isle. And for his own part would have given anything in the world to he was pleased by the thought of seeing banish from her countenance. It was so Oona for the first time in an accidental then! This man, who had, all unawares, way, without any responsibility, so to produced so much effect upon her life and speak, of his own. It was a little chilly thoughts, was coming back within her for a water-party, but on the lochs people little circle of existence in Katie Williamare prepared for that and it interferes with son's train! She smiled to herself a mono one's pleasure. The afternoon was ment after, holding her head high, and full of sunshine, and every bit of broken with a sense of ridicule pervading the bank, and every island and feathery crest | being which had been momentarily trans.

fixed by that keen arrow of surprise and | ascended the slope, and that is saying pain. She said to herself that the humor much. Mrs. Forrester led the way in of it was more than any one could have the highest satisfaction. believed, but that all was well. Oh, more "Mysie, ye will stand on no ceremony than well! -for was not this the thing of about following," she said, "but run on all others that was good for her, that before and see that the tea is masked: would put the matter on the easiest foot- but not too much, to get that boiled taste. ing? All this flew through her mind like It is perhaps extravagant, but I like to lightning while the boat came close, amid have just what you may call the first flavor the friendly shouts and greetings of the of the tea. And let the scones be just crew, all of them "neighbors' sons." Mr. ready to bring ben, for Miss Williamson Braithwaite, the English observer, sat by must not be kept too late on the water at admiring while these brotherly salutations this time of the year. To tell the truth,' were gone through. Perhaps he did not she said, turning with her smiles to the note in his diary that the young aborig- member of Parliament, a functionary for ines called each other by their Christian whom she had a great respect, counting names, but he did make a remark to that him more important than a young lord, effect in his mind. And then there en- who after all was in the position of a sued the little tumult of disembarking, in "neighbor's son," ""to tell the truth I the midst of which Oona, holding out her have just to be inhospitable at this season hand, frankly greeted Lord Erradeen. and push them away with my own hands: "We heard you had come back," she said, for it is always fresh upon the loch, and a giving him a look of full and confident score of young creatures with colds, all Composure which puzzled Walter. She because I let them stay half an hour too meant him, and not him only, to perceive late would be a dreadful reflection. This the frankness of a reception in which will be your first visit to the loch? Oh, I there was not a shade of embarrassment, am sure we are delighted to see you, both no recollection of the strange moment they had spent together, or of the encounter that had taken place upon the isle. When one pair of eyes look into another with that momentary demonstration it is a proof of some meaning more than meets the eye. And Walter, whose own eyes were full too of a something, subdued and concealed so far as possible-a deprecating, wistful look in which there was pardon sought (though he had consciously done her no wrong; but in doing wrong at all had he not offended Oona as Dante offended Beatrice, although she might never know of what sins he had been guilty?) and homage offered was still inore perplexed by that open gaze in which there was nothing of the softness of the look with which Oona had watched him going away, and which had so often recurred to his mind since. What did it mean? It gave him welcome, but a wel- And then the group gathered at the come that felt like the closing of a door. turning, and looked out upon KinlochHe was far too much occupied with in-houran, lying in shadow, in the dimness vestigating this problem to remark the corresponding look, the slight, almost imperceptible smile that passed between Oona and Katie as they met. In the midst of all the cheerful din, the merry voices on the air, the boats run up upon the beach, the cheerful movement towards the house, such fine shades of feeling and dramatic purpose can make themselves apparent to those who are in the secret, but to no other. A merrier party never

Oona and me. We are always pleased to meet with strangers that have an appreciation. Some people would think it was a very lonely life upon the isle; but I assure you if I could give you a list of all the people that come here! It would be rather a good thing to keep a list, now that I think of it, you would see some names that would be a pleasure to any one to see. Yes, I think I must just set up a visiting-book, as if we were living in some grand place in London, say Grosve nor Square. What are you saying, Katie, my dear? Oh yes, I have shaken hands with Lord Erradeen. I am very glad to see him back, and I hope he will stay longer and let us see more of him than last year. This is one of our finest views. I always stop here to point it out to strangers," she added, pausing, for indeed it was her favorite spot to take breath.

of one of those quick-flying clouds which give so much charm to a Highland landscape. The old grey ruin lying upon the dulled surface, steel blue and cold, of the water, which round the isle was dancing in sunshine, gave a curious effectiveness to the landscape.

"It is the ghost-castle." "It is the haunted house," said one of the visitors, in a whisper, who would have spoken loud enough but for the presence of Wal

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