summer. It would be too sad if Unah | some respects far superior advantages. I were to marry him on the brink of a will own that I like Mr. Tempest very breakdown.” much." "How can you say such a thing!" protested the minister with pain, almost with anger. "I have been thinking Don uncommonly steady in his progress towards health, as well as very busy and active all this year. Marjory, I cannot bear you to forebode evil in his case at this date." with quick repulsion. "If the evil is there," she argued, "it will do no good for us to shut our eyes to it;" but she said it slowly and in a lower tone, and she did not look again at him. Certainly" People take great liberties," she protested indignantly and flushing hotly; "what have they to do with our private affairs?" "That is neither here nor there," said the minister a little hotly and incoherently. "I may be prejudiced; very likely I am, since I have sufficient cause. Do you know this young fellow's name is beginning to be coupled with Unah's in a most objectionable manner, considering her enHe did not say whether it was merely gagement? Of course, this Lochbuy story because of his strong interest in, and affec-in giving fresh impetus to the scandal. tion for, his kinsman and former ward and More than once yesterday, in my visits pupil, or whether there was any other idea at Fetterbog, there were sly, and what -the entertaining of which was, to his were to me most annoying, allusions, mind, an insult to his wife, who must be which I could not overlook, made in the innocent- that made her speech move him inquiries for the family here. And when I came to old Mrs. Macdonald, Menmuir, she put it to me plainly, whether my daughter's marriage with her 'silly' cousin was not broken off, that she might form a grander connection with some fine En- he tried to compose him-glish lord or other in the Castle Moyself and be reasonable "only, if that be dart family? Did you ever hear anything true, we ought to have foreseen it long more disgraceful?" ago." Then he appealed to her half wistfully. Something has occurred which has put me out. I don't know how the foolish story has arisen - I suppose in the silly fit of excitement and dissipation which always comes over us with the shootingseason but I am sure it has been allowed to gain ground solely because you, like me, never dreamt that the smallest precaution could be necessary. I allude to Unah's running about and chattering though the child is not a chatter-box in general it is not like her as she would have done with any English girl near her own age to whom she could have been of use, in showing her the pass, and the moor, and the lochs, and in introducing her to our Highland customs - but unfortu nately it is not a girl it is that jackanapes Tempest. I must call him so, though he had the nouse to show only manliness and modesty to me. It seems he has great expectations, and is a splendid match, with all the false importance and injury to a young man's simplicity and generosity which that absurd classification involves. I have seen something of the result before, even up here in Fearnavoil." She confronted him fairly and firmly now. "Farquhar, I never heard you so unjust before," she said with spirit. "Frank Tempest is neither a conceited coxcomb nor a premature man of the world. He has much to learn yet, poor boy, but as it is he is a fine young fellow, much less self-important and ostentatious than Donald Drumchatt, who has had in "Well, it seems to me they have a great deal to do, if I am their friend as well as their minister. That is not what I complain of. It is the utter falsehood of the story, and the being forced to see that they can suspect us of being guilty of such meanness and baseness. For it would be unutterably mean and base," said the minister with a look of being wounded to the quick in his ordinarily peaceful, kindly face, and at the same time with a gaze beseeching to anguish, in the eyes fixed upon her. Mrs. Macdonald appeared nevertheless to beg the question. "Mrs. Macdonald, Menmuir, is a very worldly person; she judges her neighbors as she does herself; she has the longest and worst tongue in the parish. If Donald Drumchatt is ready to condemn us on such evidence as hers, his faith in us can never have been very great!" she ended contemptuously. He "Donald has not condemned us. has behaved very well very well indeed in the business. There is no fault to be found with Don," continued the minister, always more excited, "but I will not have these things said of my daughter, and by inference of you and me, Marjory. I tell you I will not. If I believed there was a grain of truth in them but there is not it is a vile calumny on Unah to give credit to a single word of the malicious lie - I should never hold up my head, or have the face to enter my pulpit again." The meek man was absolutely transformed. He stood furious in his slandered righteousness, and fierce in his resistance to a wrong which, if it were inflicted by any member of his family, would be inflicted by himself, inasmuch as he understood himself to have sworn, in the double light of the head of a house and the minister of a parish, that as for him and his-they would serve the Lord in the first foundations of truth and honesty, if they could go no farther. - of a doubt of its attainment a doubt which she would have been incapable of measuring. Mrs. Macdonald suddenly looked up with bright, moist eyes in her husband's constrained, agitated face, and put her hand affectionately on his quivering shoulder. "My dear Farquhar, why do you suffer yourself to be vexed like this? Why do you mind what incredible nonsense people are silly or mischievous enough to talk, when you know Unah is no flirt or jilt, and when everybody knows you are the last man in the world to commit an injustice, or to fail in your word? Ah! Farquhar, it is not here that we need expect to be judged fairly, or to receive the reward of a patient continuance in welldoing. But you can so easily with Donald Drumchatt's help, and it seems that he has taken the initiative put a stop to the idle gossip. Let us drive over to the Ford, and take the coach to Inverness to-morrow, and buy what is wanted for Unah's outfit." 66 My dear Marjory," said the minister with a great sigh, almost a gasp of relief, "I was sure you would see the matter as I did, and that you would not put any obstacle in the way of the wrong's being redressed. I am afraid there has been, in the very innocence of our hearts, an appearance of evil. But you are something far better than a female martinet. I cannot think why I was so silly as to take this folly so much to heart. I think I must have been daft on my own account a great deal dafter than Don, poor fellow, who might have been excused, had he not treated the trifle with the scanty consideration which was all it deserved. But the consultation with you has done me a world of good," he acknowledged gratefully; "a woman's judgment comes in where a man's fails.". - Mrs. Macdonald was by mental constitution a woman of quick, keen sympathies when they were not overlaid and crushed by theories and dogmas. She thrilled in response to her husband's just wrath; she felt with the swiftness and sureness of intuition, at that trying moment, all the tender reverence and full, unstinted confidence of wedded love which hung trembling in the balance. And what would life be to her without Farquhar Macdonald's deep devotion and delicate homage to which she had grown as accustomed as to the air she breathed, without which it seemed she could no more exist than she could live without the vital air? Would any outward exaltation of Unah were she to become a queen instead of a countess or duchess atone for so terrible and irreparable a loss? "Never!" was the instant, unequivocal answer of Mrs. Macdonald's nobler nature. She could not even endure to contemplate the possibility of her deprivation. Thus Mrs. Macdonald in her cleverness and sensibility was baffled as a conspirator, where a less gifted and coarser actor might have gone on and prospered. Her sensibility, above all, forged weapons against herself, which, had she been a worse woman, would either not have existed, or would have been so tempered as to prove worthless. If she had been a common hypocrite there would have been no obligation on her part to frame and preserve that veil of self-deception which a moment's self-revelation had torn aside; she would not have been tempted to throw up the game on a mere emotional check; she might have persevered craftily and boldly-seeking at once to deceive her husband and to secure his regard. She would not have succeeded, since Farquhar Macdonald com- "Yes," said Mrs. Macdonald quickly, manded in all graver dangers the powerful" but you must break the new arrangement advantage held by the man whose eye is to her. It was your and Donald's doing, single, and whose sight on that account is after all. I have only consented to it to comparatively clear. But she might not save misunderstanding. And I do think, have refrained from the attempt because as I have already told you, that it is hard “But I have not suggested any new course," said Mrs. Macdonald deprecat ingly. No, no; but you reduced the whole thing to its due proportions, and stripped from it the exaggerated importance with which I was inclined to invest it. And we are agreed in letting the marriage come off at once, which is only making up our minds to part with Unah a little sooner than we intended." upon Unah to have her marriage come ab- | had just been in to bid him good-bye before ruptly upon her like this." setting out for his winter's course of the humanities. Unah showed no indifference to the familiar tidings; on the contrary she listened eagerly, as if she thirsted for a return to every-day interests and occupations. "Oh! very well," said the minister, feeling every encounter easy after he was cer tain of his wife's views, which he ought never to have doubted. He was sure that Unah was true, since his wife had proved the high-minded, disinterested woman he "And you must be quick and get well, had always respected as deeply as he had Unah," broke off the minister with the loved her dearly; and whose perfect in- smile which when his heart was at ease tegrity he had been so left to himself as had something of womanly gentleness in to question for a wretched interval, during it. "You must know it is particularly inwhich he had been driven to become scep-cumbent on you not to be playing the invatical of the goodness of the whole world, lid and learning lazy habits just now.' with his faith in man, if not in God, tottering. "I dare say there will be no great breaking of the news needed," he predicted cheerfully. "A little lover-like impatience in the end is not without its sweet flattery to a girl. And Unah is far too unselfish and tender-hearted to grudge making a little sacrifice for Don." The light of his glad deliverance from a miserable suspicion of the person dearest to him, was still on the minister's face when he went to talk to Unah, and announce to her the alteration in their plans and the near prospect of her wedding. Unah was sitting up in her white dressing-gown, with her hair hanging loose on her shoulders. She looked younger than ever in her womanhood, and with something pathetic in the youthfulness, because of the little air of languor and fragility which even so slight an illness had lent to her pale, dark-eyed face. The minister, though a quiet man, had always plenty to say to his daughter, almost more than to his wife, whose tastes were not in such complete accordance with his own. On the present occasion there was, on one side at least, even a fuller flow of chat than usual, seeing that Unah had been shut up from the outer world for the last five days, and had not seen for herself that there had been a night of high wind and rain after the mist. One of the larches at Randal's Bridge had been blown | down, while there had been the threatening of a spate" in the Fearn, which if it had been fulfilled would have put an end to the dahlias which the early frost had spared in the garden. In addition the minister had christened Nicky Macdonald's bairn in the house, since it was far too weary a thing to be brought to the kirk; and Ludovic Macdonald, Saonach, 66 * A flickering color came into Unah's cheek and a startled, inquiring look into her eyes. "I think I cannot do better in any case than get well as soon as possible. I am tired of being ill; indeed I am not ill, I am almost as well as ever-to say anything else is a polite fiction of the doctor's. I don't wish to give my mother or anybody else any farther trouble, or to miss any more events wrecks left by storms, or christenings and leavetakings,' she said hastily. "But why is recovering such a special obligation just now?" "Because" the minister hesitated, certainly no longer in any great trouble about the nature of his message, and with no particular thought for his daughter, on account of an indiscretion into which he was in the end persuaded she had been drawn, along with her mother and himself, in the over-confidence of innocence, but simply with the laudable desire to make his communication neatly. "Don has found that you are a great deal too precious to him to be suffered to go risking yourself on Ben Voil in a mist without his knowledge and consent. We have all come to the conclusion that his wooing has been protracted long enough for the shortness of modern life. Our years do not reach to the term of the patriarchs, so that you cannot expect to have as great a compliment paid to you as was offered to Rachel. Your mother and I are of opinion that you should do Donald the honor of marrying him one day before the autumn is over. You are aware that winter is rather a trying season for him, poor chap, and I am sure it is the most earnest wish of your heart to lighten his burdens. Do you see now, Unah, why you must look sharp and be brisk in getting about again, that we may not lose any part of the short time you are still to be your mother's and mine entirely? The rooms down-stairs, the very pass and the moors don't look the same without you; but we must make up our mind to seeing less of you in future. It is the common lot, my dear. However, you will not be far away; you will be happy yourself, and make Don happy; there is not the slightest room for complaintrather we are bound to be humbly thankful." The minister pulled himself up, after falling into a somewhat pensive line of reflection. But he bethought himself in time that to announce the hastening of the marriage and then to discuss the measure in a doleful strain, was not the judicious reassuring treatment which might have been expected from a man of his experience in "breaking" such news to a girl with even the shadow of an illness upon her. and talked a little longer to his daughter. He spoke to her quietly of the days of his youth-of his early hopes and aspirations. He told her of the mingled pride and humility with which he had become a minister of the Church - that old Scotch Church which had come through fire and flood, which had been more than once rent asunder, but which was still the National Church - nay more, which had yet beating warm at its heart life from the Lord of life -life that thrilled and throbbed through every member, and waxed strong in earnest faith and good works. He referred simply to the failures and mistakes as well as the successes of his own and her mother's work, but was clear that, withal, it became them to take courage and not be weary in well doing. Unah listened earnestly, and assented softly. But Unah, timid as she was, did not betray perturbation; she did not shrink from the proposal. She heard it with a long-drawn breath and a fixed look in her father's face —a look that had more of indefinite yearning than of rebellion and Although Unah had spoken of her illness repugnance in it. "Yes," she said emphat- as a polite fiction on her doctor's part, and ically, "I have wished to lighten Don's although she might have grown tired of it, burdens. I have promised, and I think I she had been more thankful for its reality, can help him. There is nothing to hinder in the first place, than she remembered me since you and my mother have agreed ever feeling grateful for any boon bestowed to it. I would rather go to him at once. on her. It had been a refuge for her till Let us have the marriage and the parting she could come to herself, and brace her. and everything over," she said, with a self to bear what was in store for her. It slight quiver of the lip and twitch of the had made everybody—including Don, inwool which she had been knitting and with dulgent to her, and indisposed to weigh which her hand was playing. Then she strictly and put harsh constructions on any smiled slightly, and added as at a joke she disorder that she might be unable to banish was guilty of making, "It is better to sub-in a moment from her words and looks. mit to an operation than to have it constantly hanging over one's hea!." "You are my dear, good lassie," said her father warmly; "women are greatly mistaken when they imagine that pride and coquetry, or simply affectation, will recommend them and raise their value in the eyes of men worthy of the name." The minister was perfectly satisfied. Even his ear, dulled by the familiarity of use and wont, and the tyranny of a preconceived impression, did not catch, in the voice which was so well known and so pleasant to him, a sigh of weariness after a sharp struggle of terror clutching at the first support that offered itself of desperate desire to get rid of uncertainty and apprehension by taking the decisive step which nothing could undo. "To have it all over," she had said piteously, and those who knew everything and could understand all might have measured her words. But among the enlightened was not the loving father, the good and honest man who had taught, trained, and cherished ber since she had been a helpless baby. Then Farquhar Macdonald sat down Above all, it screened her from what she dreaded most any chance of meeting Frank Tempest after the day on Ben Voil. He was lavish in his expressions of concern-unremitting in his inquiries, but under the excuse of her illness she was saved from hearing more than the distant echo of his sympathy. All the time she knew that when the days of her illness, like the days of the mourning for the dead, were ended, she would return to the world much the same girl outwardly, perhaps, but still changed at the core, and that irrevocably. All the sweet, lingering immaturity, "the tender grace" of budding womanhood that is not yet in flower, would be left behind her, and the eyes of the spirit which had been unsealed would never be closed again. She would be like Kilmeny, when she came back from that wondrous sleep in the lonely dell. Only Kilmeny appeared with a peace past breaking on her charmed face, and Unah would resume life with a heart full of undying regret and vain repentance. Withal, it never entered into Unah's conception that the explanation which had | pale cheeks were dyed red with shame in taken place between her and Frank Tem- the very privacy of her sick-room. She pest could alter her relations with Donald was like Jenny in "Auld Robin Grey," Drumchatt, even though her tender con- when the young wife cries in her uprightscience and honorable nature were weighed ness, no less than in her anguish, to the ground under the sense of having unwittingly failed her plighted husband. and played him false. I daurna think on Jamie, For that would be a sin; Unah was not yet a wife; Donald Drumchatt was not yet her gudeman; and she knew little or nothing of those fine distinctions of the sturdily honest old marriage laws of Scotland, which are disposed to hold a written pledge even a verbal promise duly witnessed as well-nigh equivalent to the sacred rite performed. But to a girl who reverenced her word as Unah reverenced hers, an engagement in marriage was what a betrothal is to a German girl, only second in solemnity to the marriage itself, and not to be cancelled save for the weightiest and most terrible reasons-physical death, or infidelity on the man's part, which would be as his death to the woman. Unah was, like her father, simply incapable of doing anything else than keep her word, though "it might be to her hurt; " and neither father nor daughter could see beyond their word. It might have been moral stupidity and blindness in them so many people argue glibly on the slightest and most fanciful premises that it is much better to break one's word, than to do unknown harm by keeping it. And it is plain to all that in the case of a rash criminal vow, both God and man are more honored in the breach than in the observance. But then Mr. Macdonald and Unah were not at all the sort of persons who would take criminal vows, while with regard to the obligations they did incur, they had in them a curious mixture of self-respect and of modesty. They did not undertake what they were not fit to fulfil, and knowing this they felt bound to discharge their debt. They had a manly, womanly, and very Christian conviction that they could by higher help control their own inclinations. And they were not possessed with the idea that they and their feelings were of such enormous importance, that the absence of some special sentiment, or even the presence of a war-true-heartedness. ring sentiment painfully but faithfully resisted on their part, must work misery to more than themselves, and prove richer in the elements of ruin to all concerned, than broken pledges and shattered trust would be. The minister was acting in ignorance, and Unah in knowledge of the obstacle which had arisen in her heart. But had he shared her knowledge, his conclusion would have been the same. It might have been moral stupidity and blindness in them, but it was the manner in which they read their duty by the light of their Bibles and by their quiet, steadfast godliness and From Blackwood's Magazine. A SCOTS BISHOP. Unah knew that she could still, as she THE most attractive phase in the hispromised, help and cheer Donald in his tory of every religious denomination is the dismal mansion of Drumchatt; and she season of its adversity. No doubt a believed that, being on the whole so well Church feels a justifiable pride when it can pleased with himself and his position, he point to annual reports of flourishing progwould in all likelihood be content with ress, to increasing rolls of membership, what she could give him, even while her to swelling subscriptions and endowments, heart was sore for another love. It did to extensive missionary operations at home, not strike her that there was any wrong and to imposing efforts among the heacommitted, any demeaning of herself in then abroad. But this prosperity is sel thus doing what she could to atone for her dom compatible with picturesqueness. If involuntary betrayal of confidence; and so Churches, like corporations, do not grow far from thinking that it was a sin against bloated as they wax rich, the world is apt the love which she never knew she felt for to qualify its acknowledgment of their Frank Tempest till the day on Ben Voil, success by the imputation of vulgarity. it was that love which was a sin in her The simple, self-denying, humble spirit of eyes, and against which she recoiled. It the great founder of Christianity is not was under the consciousness of its exist- so apparent, or perhaps the world is not ence that she writhed, and her ordinarily so forcibly compelled to recognize it, as |