Table of Contents

CHAPTER XVII. A BROKEN FETTER

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KILMENY OF THE ORCHARD

By L. M. MONTGOMERY

Author of "Anne's House of Dreams," "Rainbow Valley,"

"Rilla of Ingleside," etc.

Transcriber's Note:

This book has been put on-line as part of the BUILD-A-BOOK Initiative at the

Celebration of Women Writers through the combined work of Elizabeth Morton and

Mary Mark Ockerbloom.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/

Reformatted by Ben Crowder

TO MY COUSIN

Beatrice A. McIntyre

THIS BOOK

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

" Ki l meny l ooked up wi t h a l ovel y gr ace,

But nae smi l e was seen on Ki l meny' s f ace;

As st i l l was her l ook, and as st i l l was her ee,

As t he st i l l ness t hat l ay on t he emer ant l ea,

Or t he mi st t hat sl eeps on a wavel ess sea.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Such beaut y bar d may never decl ar e,

For t her e was no pr i de nor passi on t her e;

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Her seymar was t he l i l y f l ower ,

And her cheek t he moss - r ose i n t he shower ;

And her voi ce l i ke t he di st ant mel odye

That f l oat s al ong t he t wi l i ght sea. "

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— The Queen's Wake

JAMES HOGG

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH

CHAPTER II. A LETTER OF DESTINY

CHAPTER III. THE MASTER OF LINDSAY SCHOOL

CHAPTER IV. A TEA TABLE CONVERSATION

CHAPTER V. A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT

CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF KILMENY

CHAPTER VII. A ROSE OF WOMANHOOD

CHAPTER VIII. AT THE GATE OF EDEN

CHAPTER IX. THE STRAIGHT SIMPLICITY OF EVE

CHAPTER X. A TROUBLING OF THE WATERS

CHAPTER XI. A LOVER AND HIS LASS

CHAPTER XII. A PRISONER OF LOVE

CHAPTER XIII. A SWEETER WOMAN NE'ER DREW BREATH

CHAPTER XIV. IN HER SELFLESS MOOD

CHAPTER XV. AN OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THING

CHAPTER XVI. DAVID BAKER'S OPINION

CHAPTER XVII. A BROKEN FETTER

CHAPTER XVIII. NEIL GORDON SOLVES HIS OWN PROBLEM

CHAPTER XIX. VICTOR FROM VANQUISHED ISSUES

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KILMENY OF THE ORCHARD

CHAPTER I. THE THOUGHTS OF YOUTH

The sunshine of a day in early spring, honey pale and honey sweet, was showering over the red brick

buildings of Queenslea College and the grounds about them, throwing through the bare, budding

maples and elms, delicate, evasive etchings of gold and brown on the paths, and coaxing into life the

daffodils that were peering greenly and perkily up under the windows of the co-eds' dressing-room.

A young April wind, as fresh and sweet as if it had been blowing over the fields of memory instead

of through dingy streets, was purring in the tree-tops and whipping the loose tendrils of the ivy

network which covered the front of the main building. It was a wind that sang of many things, but

what it sang to each listener was only what was in that listener's heart. To the college students who

had just been capped and diplomad by "Old Charlie," the grave president of Queenslea, in the

presence of an admiring throng of parents and sisters, sweethearts and friends, it sang, perchance, of

glad hope and shining success and high achievement. It sang of the dreams of youth that may never

be quite fulfilled, but are well worth the dreaming for all that. God help the man who has never

known such dreams—who, as he leaves his alma mater, is not already rich in aerial castles, the

proprietor of many a spacious estate in Spain. He has missed his birthright.

The crowd streamed out of the entrance hall and scattered over the campus, fraying off into the many

streets beyond. Eric Marshall and David Baker walked away together. The former had graduated in

Arts that day at the head of his class; the latter had come to see the graduation, nearly bursting with

pride in Eric's success.

Between these two was an old and tried and enduring friendship, although David was ten years older

than Eric, as the mere tale of years goes, and a hundred years older in knowledge of the struggles and

difficulties of life which age a man far more quickly and effectually than the passing of time.

Physically the two men bore no resemblance to one another, although they were second cousins. Eric

Marshall, tall, broad-shouldered, sinewy, walking with a free, easy stride, which was somehow

suggestive of reserve strength and power, was one of those men regarding whom less-favoured

mortals are tempted seriously to wonder why all the gifts of fortune should be showered on one

individual. He was not only clever and good to look upon, but he possessed that indefinable charm of

personality which is quite independent of physical beauty or mental ability. He had steady, grayish-

blue eyes, dark chestnut hair with a glint of gold in its waves when the sunlight struck it, and a chin

that gave the world assurance of a chin. He was a rich man's son, with a clean young manhood

behind him and splendid prospects before him. He was considered a practical sort of fellow, utterly

guiltless of romantic dreams and visions of any sort.

"I am afraid Eric Marshall will never do one quixotic thing," said a Queenslea professor, who had a habit of uttering rather mysterious epigrams, "but if he ever does it will supply the one thing lacking in him."

David Baker was a short, stocky fellow with an ugly, irregular, charming face; his eyes were brown

and keen and secretive; his mouth had a comical twist which became sarcastic, or teasing, or

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winning, as he willed. His voice was generally as soft and musical as a woman's; but some few who

had seen David Baker righteously angry and heard the tones which then issued from his lips were in

no hurry to have the experience repeated.

He was a doctor—a specialist in troubles of the throat and voice—and he was beginning to have a

national reputation. He was on the staff of the Queenslea Medical College and it was whispered that

before long he would be called to fill an important vacancy at McGill.

He had won his way to success through difficulties and drawbacks which would have daunted most

men. In the year Eric was born David Baker was an errand boy in the big department store of

Marshall & Company. Thirteen years later he graduated with high honors from Queenslea Medical

College. Mr. Marshall had given him all the help which David's sturdy pride could be induced to

accept, and now he insisted on sending the young man abroad for a post-graduate course in London

and Germany. David Baker had eventually repaid every cent Mr. Marshall had expended on him; but

he never ceased to cherish a passionate gratitude to the kind and generous man; and he loved that

man's son with a love surpassing that of brothers.

He had followed Eric's college course with keen, watchful interest. It was his wish that Eric should

take up the study of law or medicine now that he was through Arts; and he was greatly disappointed

that Eric should have finally made up his mind to go into business with his father.

"It's a clean waste of your talents," he grumbled, as they walked home from the college. "You'd win fame and distinction in law—that glib tongue of yours was meant for a lawyer and it is sheer flying

in the face of Providence to devote it to commercial uses—a flat crossing of the purposes of destiny.

Where is your ambition, man?"

"In the right place," answered Eric, with his ready laugh. "It is not your kind, perhaps, but there is room and need for all kinds in this lusty young country of ours. Yes, I am going into the business. In

the first place, it has been father's cherished desire ever since I was born, and it would hurt him

pretty badly if I backed out now. He wished me to take an Arts course because he believed that every

man should have as liberal an education as he can afford to get, but now that I have had it he wants

me in the firm."

"He wouldn't oppose you if he thought you really wanted to go in for something else."

"Not he. But I don't really want to—that's the point, David, man. You hate a business life so much

yourself that you can't get it into your blessed noddle that another man might like it. There are many

lawyers in the world—too many, perhaps—but there are never too many good honest men of

business, ready to do clean big things for the betterment of humanity and the upbuilding of their

country, to plan great enterprises and carry them through with brain and courage, to manage and

control, to aim high and strike one's aim. There, I'm waxing eloquent, so I'd better stop. But

ambition, man! Why, I'm full of it—it's bubbling in every pore of me. I mean to make the department

store of Marshall & Company famous from ocean to ocean. Father started in life as a poor boy from

a Nova Scotian farm. He has built up a business that has a provincial reputation. I mean to carry it

on. In five years it shall have a maritime reputation, in ten, a Canadian. I want to make the firm of

Marshall & Company stand for something big in the commercial interests of Canada. Isn't that as

honourable an ambition as trying to make black seem white in a court of law, or discovering some

new disease with a harrowing name to torment poor creatures who might otherwise die peacefully in

blissful ignorance of what ailed them?"

"When you begin to make poor jokes it is time to stop arguing with you," said David, with a shrug of his fat shoulders. "Go your own gait and dree your own weird. I'd as soon expect success in trying to storm the citadel single-handed as in trying to turn you from any course about which you had once

made up your mind. Whew, this street takes it out of a fellow! What could have possessed our

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ancestors to run a town up the side of a hill? I'm not so slim and active as I was on MY graduation

day ten years ago. By the way, what a lot of co-eds were in your class—twenty, if I counted right.

When I graduated there were only two ladies in our class and they were the pioneers of their sex at

Queenslea. They were well past their first youth, very grim and angular and serious; and they could

never have been on speaking terms with a mirror in their best days. But mark you, they were

excellent females—oh, very excellent. Times have changed with a vengeance, judging from the line-

up of co-eds to-day. There was one girl there who can't be a day over eighteen—and she looked as if

she were made out of gold and roseleaves and dewdrops."

"The oracle speaks in poetry," laughed Eric. "That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I'm a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can't say that

such is my opinion. I don't greatly care for that blonde, babyish style of loveliness—I prefer Agnes

Campion. Did you notice her—the tall, dark girl with the ropes of hair and a sort of crimson, velvety

bloom on her face, who took honours in philosophy?"

"I DID notice her," said David emphatically, darting a keen side glance at his friend. "I noticed her most particularly and critically—for someone whispered her name behind me and coupled it with the

exceedingly interesting information that Miss Campion was supposed to be the future Mrs. Eric

Marshall. Whereupon I stared at her with all my eyes."

"There is no truth in that report," said Eric in a tone of annoyance. "Agnes and I are the best of friends and nothing more. I like and admire her more than any woman I know; but if the future Mrs.

Eric Marshall exists in the flesh I haven't met her yet. I haven't even started out to look for her—and

don't intend to for some years to come. I have something else to think of," he concluded, in a tone of contempt, for which anyone might have known he would be punished sometime if Cupid were not

deaf as well as blind.

"You'll meet the lady of the future some day," said David dryly. "And in spite of your scorn I venture to predict that if fate doesn't bring her before long you'll very soon start out to look for her. A word

of advice, oh, son of your mother. When you go courting take your common sense with you."

"Do you think I shall be likely to leave it behind?" asked Eric amusedly.

"Well, I mistrust you," said David, sagely wagging his head. "The Lowland Scotch part of you is all right, but there's a Celtic streak in you, from that little Highland grandmother of yours, and when a

man has that there's never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him,

especially when it comes to this love-making business. You are just as likely as not to lose your head

over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for

life. When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a candid

opinion on her."

"Pass all the opinions you like, but it is MY opinion, and mine only, which will matter in the long

run," retorted Eric.

"Confound you, yes, you stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed," growled David, looking at him

affectionately. "I know that, and that is why I'll never feel at ease about you until I see you married to the right sort of a girl. She's not hard to find. Nine out of ten girls in this country of ours are fit for kings' palaces. But the tenth always has to be reckoned with."

"You are as bad as Clever Alice in the fairy tale who worried over the future of her unborn children,"

protested Eric.

" Clever Alice has been very unjustly laughed at," said David gravely. "We doctors know that.

Perhaps she overdid the worrying business a little, but she was perfectly right in principle. If people

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worried a little more about their unborn children—at least, to the extent of providing a proper

heritage, physically, mentally, and morally, for them—and then stopped worrying about them after

they ARE born, this world would be a very much pleasanter place to live in, and the human race

would make more progress in a generation than it has done in recorded history."

"Oh, if you are going to mount your dearly beloved hobby of heredity I am not going to argue with

you, David, man. But as for the matter of urging me to hasten and marry me a wife, why don't

you"—It was on Eric's lips to say, "Why don't you get married to a girl of the right sort yourself and set me a good example?" But he checked himself. He knew that there was an old sorrow in David

Baker's life which was not to be unduly jarred by the jests even of privileged friendship. He changed

his question to, "Why don't you leave this on the knees of the gods where it properly belongs? I

thought you were a firm believer in predestination, David."

"Well, so I am, to a certain extent," said David cautiously. "I believe, as an excellent old aunt of mine used to say, that what is to be will be and what isn't to be happens sometimes. And it is

precisely such unchancy happenings that make the scheme of things go wrong. I dare say you think

me an old fogy, Eric; but I know something more of the world than you do, and I believe, with

Tennyson's Arthur, that 'there's no more subtle master under heaven than is the maiden passion for a maid.' I want to see you safely anchored to the love of some good woman as soon as may be, that's

all. I'm rather sorry Miss Campion isn't your lady of the future. I liked her looks, that I did. She is

good and strong and true—and has the eyes of a woman who could love in a way that would be

worth while. Moreover, she's well-born, well-bred, and well-educated—three very indispensable

things when it comes to choosing a woman to fill your mother's place, friend of mine!"

"I agree with you," said Eric carelessly. "I could not marry any woman who did not fulfill those conditions. But, as I have said, I am not in love with Agnes Campion—and it wouldn't be of any use

if I were. She is as good as engaged to Larry West. You remember West?"

"That thin, leggy fellow you chummed with so much your first two years in Queenslea? Yes, what

has become of him?"

"He had to drop out after his second year for financial reasons. He is working his own way through

college, you know. For the past two years he has been teaching school in some out-of-the-way place

over in Prince Edward Island. He isn't any too well, poor fellow—never was very strong and has

studied remorselessly. I haven't heard from him since February. He said then that he was afraid he

wasn't going to be able to stick it out till the end of the school year. I hope Larry won't break down.

He is a fine fellow and worthy even of Agnes Campion. Well, here we are. Coming in, David?"

"Not this afternoon—haven't got time. I must mosey up to the North End to see a man who has got a

lovely throat. Nobody can find out what is the matter. He has puzzled all the doctors. He has puzzled

me, but I'll find out what is wrong with him if he'll only live long enough."

CHAPTER II. A LETTER OF DESTINY

Eric, finding that his father had not yet returned from the college, went into the library and sat down

to read a letter he had picked up from the hall table. It was from Larry West, and after the first few

lines Eric's face lost the absent look it had worn and assumed an expression of interest.

"I am writing to ask a favour of you, Marshall," wrote West. "The fact is, I've fallen into the hands of Page 7 of 66

the Philistines—that is to say, the doctors. I've not been feeling very fit all winter but I've held on,

hoping to finish out the year.

"Last week my landlady—who is a saint in spectacles and calico—looked at me one morning at the

breakfast table and said, VERY gently, 'You must go to town to-morrow, Master, and see a doctor

about yourself.'

"I went and did not stand upon the order of my going. Mrs. Williamson is She-Who-Must-Be-

Obeyed. She has an inconvenient habit of making you realize that she is exactly right, and that you

would be all kinds of a fool if you didn't take her advice. You feel that what she thinks to-day you

will think to-morrow.

"In Charlottetown I consulted a doctor. He punched and pounded me, and poked things at me and

listened at the other end of them; and finally he said I must stop work 'immejutly and to onct' and hie

me straightway to a climate not afflicted with the north-east winds of Prince Edward Island in the

spring. I am not to be allowed to do any work until the fall. Such was his dictum and Mrs.

Williamson enforces it.

"I shall teach this week out and then the spring vacation of three weeks begins. I want you to come

over and take my place as pedagogue in the Lindsay school for the last week in May and the month

of June. The school year ends then and there will be plenty of teachers looking for the place, but just

now I cannot get a suitable substitute. I have a couple of pupils who are preparing to try the Queen's

Academy entrance examinations, and I don't like to leave them in the lurch or hand them over to the

tender mercies of some third-class teacher who knows little Latin and less Greek. Come over and

take the school till the end of the term, you petted son of luxury. It will do you a world of good to

learn how rich a man feels when he is earning twenty-five dollars a month by his own unaided

efforts!

"Seriously, Marshall, I hope you can come, for I don't know any other fellow I can ask. The work

isn't hard, though you'll likely find it monotonous. Of course, this little north-shore farming

settlement isn't a very lively place. The rising and setting of the sun are the most exciting events of

the average day. But the people are very kind and hospitable; and Prince Edward Island in the month

of June is such a thing as you don't often see except in happy dreams. There are some trout in the

pond and you'll always find an old salt at the harbour ready and willing to take you out cod-fishing

or lobstering.

"I'll bequeath you my boarding house. You'll find it comfortable and not further from the school than a good constitutional. Mrs. Williamson is the dearest soul alive; and she is one of those old-fashioned cooks who feed you on feasts of fat things and whose price is above rubies.

"Her husband, Robert, or Bob, as he is commonly called despite his sixty years, is quite a character in his way. He is an amusing old gossip, with a turn for racy comment and a finger in everybody's

pie. He knows everything about everybody in Lindsay for three generations back.

"They have no living children, but Old Bob has a black cat which is his especial pride and darling.

The name of this animal is Timothy and as such he must always be called and referred to. Never, as

you value Robert's good opinion, let him hear you speaking of his pet as 'the cat,' or even as 'Tim.'

You will never be forgiven and he will not consider you a fit person to have charge of the school.

"You shall have my room, a little place over the kitchen, with a ceiling that follows the slant of the roof down one side, against which you will bump your head times innumerable until you learn to

remember that it is there, and a looking glass which will make one of your eyes as small as a pea and

the other as big as an orange.

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"But to compensate for these disadvantages the supply of towels is generous and unexceptionable;

and there is a window whence you will daily behold an occidental view over Lindsay Harbour and

the gulf beyond which is an unspeakable miracle of beauty. The sun is setting over it as I write and I

see such a sea of glass mingled with fire as might have figured in the visions of the Patmian seer. A

vessel is sailing away into the gold and crimson and pearl of the horizon; the big revolving light on

the tip of the headland beyond the harbour has just been lighted and is winking and flashing like a

beacon,

" ' O' er t he f oam

Of per i l ous seas i n f aer i e l ands f or l or n. ' "

"Wire me if you can come; and if you can, report for duty on the twenty-third of May."

Mr. Marshall, Senior, came in, just as Eric was thoughtfully folding up his letter. The former looked

more like a benevolent old clergyman or philanthropist than the keen, shrewd, somewhat hard,

although just and honest, man of business that he really was. He had a round, rosy face, fringed with

white whiskers, a fine head of long white hair, and a pursed-up mouth. Only in his blue eyes was a

twinkle that would have made any man who designed getting the better of him in a bargain think

twice before he made the attempt.

It was easily seen that Eric must have inherited his personal beauty and distinction of form from his

mother, whose picture hung on the dark wall between the windows. She had died while still young,

when Eric was a boy of ten. During her lifetime she had been the object of the passionate devotion of

both her husband and son; and the fine, strong, sweet face of the picture was a testimony that she had

been worthy of their love and reverence. The same face, cast in a masculine mold, was repeated in

Eric; the chestnut hair grew off his forehead in the same way; his eyes were like hers, and in his

grave moods they held a similar expression, half brooding, half tender, in their depths.

Mr. Marshall was very proud of his son's success in college, but he had no intention of letting him

see it. He loved this boy of his, with the dead mother's eyes, better than anything on earth, and all his hopes and ambitions were bound up in him.

"Well, that fuss is over, thank goodness," he said testily, as he dropped into his favourite chair.

"Didn't you find the programme interesting?" asked Eric absently.

"Most of it was tommyrot," said his father. "The only things I liked were Charlie's Latin prayer and those pretty little girls trotting up to get their diplomas. Latin IS the language for praying in, I do

believe,—at least, when a man has a voice like Old Charlie's. There was such a sonorous roll to the

words that the mere sound of them made me feel like getting down on my marrow bones. And then

those girls were as pretty as pinks, now weren't they? Agnes was the finest-looking of the lot in my

opinion. I hope it's true that you're courting her, Eric?"

"Confound it, father," said Eric, half irritably, half laughingly, "have you and David Baker entered into a conspiracy to hound me into matrimony whether I will or no?"

"I've never said a word to David Baker on such a subject," protested Mr. Marshall.

"Well, you are just as bad as he is. He hectored me all the way home from the college on the subject.

But why are you in such a hurry to have me married, dad?"

"Because I want a homemaker in this house as soon as may be. There has never been one since your

mother died. I am tired of housekeepers. And I want to see your children at my knees before I die,

Eric, and I'm an old man now."

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"Well, your wish is natural, father," said Eric gently, with a glance at his mother's picture. "But I can't rush out and marry somebody off-hand, can I? And I fear it wouldn't exactly do to advertise for

a wife, even in these days of commercial enterprise."

"Isn't there ANYBODY you're fond of?" queried Mr. Marshall, with the patient air of a man who

overlooks the frivolous jests of youth.

"No. I never yet saw the woman who could make my heart beat any faster."

"I don't know what you young men are made of nowadays," growled his father. "I was in love half a dozen times before I was your age."

"You might have been 'in love.' But you never LOVED any woman until you met my mother. I know

that, father. And it didn't happen till you were pretty well on in life either."

"You're too hard to please. That's what's the matter, that's what's the matter!"

"Perhaps I am. When a man has had a mother like mine his standard of womanly sweetness is apt to

be pitched pretty high. Let's drop the subject, father. Here, I want you to read this letter—it's from

Larry."

"Humph!" grunted Mr. Marshall, when he had finished with it. "So Larry's knocked out at last—

always thought he would be—always expected it. Sorry, too. He was a decent fellow. Well, are you

going?"

"Yes, I think so, if you don't object."

"You'll have a pretty monotonous time of it, judging from his account of Lindsay."

"Probably. But I am not going over in search of excitement. I'm going to oblige Larry and have a

look at the Island."

"Well, it's worth looking at, some parts of the year," conceded Mr. Marshall. "When I'm on Prince Edward Island in the summer I always understand an old Scotch Islander I met once in Winnipeg. He

was always talking of 'the Island.' Somebody once asked him, 'What island do you mean?' He simply

LOOKED at that ignorant man. Then he said, 'Why, Prince Edward Island, mon. WHAT OTHER

ISLAND IS THERE?' Go if you'd like to. You need a rest after the grind of examinations before

settling down to business. And mind you don't get into any mischief, young sir."

"Not much likelihood of that in a place like Lindsay, I fancy," laughed Eric.

"Probably the devil finds as much mischief for idle hands in Lindsay as anywhere else. The worst

tragedy I ever heard of happened on a backwoods farm, fifteen miles from a railroad and five from a

store. However, I expect your mother's son to behave himself in the fear of God and man. In all

likelihood the worst thing that will happen to you over there will be that some misguided woman

will put you to sleep in a spare room bed. And if that does happen may the Lord have mercy on your

soul!"

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CHAPTER III. THE MASTER OF LINDSAY SCHOOL

One evening, a month later, Eric Marshall came out of the old, white-washed schoolhouse at

Lindsay, and locked the door—which was carved over with initials innumerable, and built of double

plank in order that it might withstand all the assaults and batteries to which it might be subjected.

Eric's pupils had gone home an hour before, but he had stayed to solve some algebra problems, and

correct some Latin exercises for his advanced students.

The sun was slanting in warm yellow lines through the thick grove of maples to the west of the

building, and the dim green air beneath them burst into golden bloom. A couple of sheep were

nibbling the lush grass in a far corner of the play-ground; a cow-bell, somewhere in the maple

woods, tinkled faintly and musically, on the still crystal air, which, in spite of its blandness, still

retained a touch of the wholesome austerity and poignancy of a Canadian spring. The whole world

seemed to have fallen, for the time being, into a pleasant untroubled dream.

The scene was very peaceful and pastoral—almost too much so, the young man thought, with a

shrug of his shoulders, as he stood in the worn steps and gazed about him. How was he going to put

in a whole month here, he wondered, with a little smile at his own expense.

"Father would chuckle if he knew I was sick of it already," he thought, as he walked across the play-ground to the long red road that ran past the school. "Well, one week is ended, at any rate. I've

earned my own living for five whole days, and that is something I could never say before in all my

twenty-four years of existence. It is an exhilarating thought. But teaching the Lindsay district school

is distinctly NOT exhilarating—at least in such a well-behaved school as this, where the pupils are

so painfully good that I haven't even the traditional excitement of thrashing obstreperous bad boys.

Everything seems to go by clock work in Lindsay educational institution. Larry must certainly have

possessed a marked gift for organizing and drilling. I feel as if I were merely a big cog in an orderly

machine that ran itself. However, I understand that there are some pupils who haven't shown up yet,

and who, according to all reports, have not yet had the old Adam totally drilled out of them. They

may make things more interesting. Also a few more compositions, such as John Reid's, would

furnish some spice to professional life."

Eric's laughter wakened the echoes as he swung into the road down the long sloping hill. He had

given his fourth grade pupils their own choice of subjects in the composition class that morning, and

John Reid, a sober, matter-of-fact little urchin, with not the slightest embryonic development of a

sense of humour, had, acting upon the whispered suggestion of a roguish desk-mate, elected to write

upon "Courting." His opening sentence made Eric's face twitch mutinously whenever he recalled it during the day. "Courting is a very pleasant thing which a great many people go too far with."

The distant hills and wooded uplands were tremulous and aerial in delicate spring-time gauzes of

pearl and purple. The young, green-leafed maples crowded thickly to the very edge of the road on

either side, but beyond them were emerald fields basking in sunshine, over which cloud shadows

rolled, broadened, and vanished. Far below the fields a calm ocean slept bluely, and sighed in its

sleep, with the murmur that rings for ever in the ear of those whose good fortune it is to have been

born within the sound of it.

Now and then Eric met some callow, check-shirted, bare-legged lad on horseback, or a shrewd-faced

farmer in a cart, who nodded and called out cheerily, "Howdy, Master?" A young girl, with a rosy, oval face, dimpled cheeks, and pretty dark eyes filled with shy coquetry, passed him, looking as if

she would not be at all averse to a better acquaintance with the new teacher.

Half way down the hill Eric met a shambling, old gray horse drawing an express wagon which had

seen better days. The driver was a woman: she appeared to be one of those drab-tinted individuals

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who can never have felt a rosy emotion in all their lives. She stopped her horse, and beckoned Eric

over to her with the knobby handle of a faded and bony umbrella.

"Reckon you're the new Master, ain't you?" she asked.

Eric admitted that he was.

"Well, I'm glad to see you," she said, offering him a hand in a much darned cotton glove that had once been black.

"I was right sorry to see Mr. West go, for he was a right good teacher, and as harmless, inoffensive a creetur as ever lived. But I always told him every time I laid eyes on him that he was in

consumption, if ever a man was. YOU look real healthy—though you can't aways tell by looks,

either. I had a brother complected like you, but he was killed in a railroad accident out west when he

was real young.

"I've got a boy I'll be sending to school to you next week. He'd oughter gone this week, but I had to keep him home to help me put the pertaters in; for his father won't work and doesn't work and can't

be made to work.

"Sandy—his full name is Edward Alexander—called after both his grandfathers—hates the idee of

going to school worse 'n pisen—always did. But go he shall, for I'm determined he's got to have

more larning hammered into his head yet. I reckon you'll have trouble with him, Master, for he's as

stupid as an owl, and as stubborn as Solomon's mule. But mind this, Master, I'll back you up. You

just lick Sandy good and plenty when he needs it, and send me a scrape of the pen home with him,

and I'll give him another dose.

"There's people that always sides in with their young ones when there's any rumpus kicked up in the

school, but I don't hold to that, and never did. You can depend on Rebecca Reid every time, Master."

"Thank you. I am sure I can," said Eric, in his most winning tones.

He kept his face straight until it was safe to relax, and Mrs. Reid drove on with a soft feeling in her

leathery old heart, which had been so toughened by long endurance of poverty and toil, and a

husband who wouldn't work and couldn't be made to work, that it was no longer a very susceptible

organ where members of the opposite sex were concerned.

Mrs. Reid reflected that this young man had a way with him.

Eric already knew most of the Lindsay folks by sight; but at the foot of the hill he met two people, a

man and a boy, whom he did not know. They were sitting in a shabby, old-fashioned wagon, and

were watering their horse at the brook, which gurgled limpidly under the little plank bridge in the

hollow.

Eric surveyed them with some curiosity. They did not look in the least like the ordinary run of

Lindsay people. The boy, in particular, had a distinctly foreign appearance, in spite of the gingham

shirt and homespun trousers, which seemed to be the regulation, work-a-day outfit for the Lindsay

farmer lads. He had a lithe, supple body, with sloping shoulders, and a lean, satiny brown throat

above his open shirt collar. His head was covered with thick, silky, black curls, and the hand that

hung down by the side of the wagon was unusually long and slender. His face was richly, though

somewhat heavily featured, olive tinted, save for the cheeks, which had a dusky crimson bloom. His

mouth was as red and beguiling as a girl's, and his eyes were large, bold and black. All in all, he was

a strikingly handsome fellow; but the expression of his face was sullen, and he somehow gave Eric

the impression of a sinuous, feline creature basking in lazy grace, but ever ready for an unexpected

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spring.

The other occupant of the wagon was a man between sixty-five and seventy, with iron-gray hair, a

long, full, gray beard, a harsh-featured face, and deep-set hazel eyes under bushy, bristling brows. He

was evidently tall, with a spare, ungainly figure, and stooping shoulders. His mouth was close-lipped

and relentless, and did not look as if it had ever smiled. Indeed, the idea of smiling could not be

connected with this man—it was utterly incongruous. Yet there was nothing repellent about his face;

and there was something in it that compelled Eric's attention.

He rather prided himself on being a student of physiognomy, and he felt quite sure that this man was

no ordinary Lindsay farmer of the genial, garrulous type with which he was familiar.

Long after the old wagon, with its oddly assorted pair, had gone lumbering up the hill, Eric found

himself thinking of the stern, heavy browed man and the black-eyed, red-lipped boy.

CHAPTER IV. A TEA TABLE CONVERSATION

The Williamson place, where Eric boarded, was on the crest of the succeeding hill. He liked it as

well as Larry West had prophesied that he would. The Williamsons, as well as the rest of the Lindsay

people, took it for granted that he was a poor college student working his way through as Larry West

had been doing. Eric did not disturb this belief, although he said nothing to contribute to it.

The Williamsons were at tea in the kitchen when Eric went in. Mrs. Williamson was the "saint in

spectacles and calico" which Larry West had termed her. Eric liked her greatly. She was a slight,

gray-haired woman, with a thin, sweet, high-bred face, deeply lined with the records of outlived

pain. She talked little as a rule; but, in the pungent country phrase she never spoke but she said

something. The one thing that constantly puzzled Eric was how such a woman ever came to marry

Robert Williamson.

She smiled in a motherly fashion at Eric, as he hung his hat on the white-washed wall and took his

place at the table. Outside of the window behind him was a birch grove which, in the westering sun,

was a tremulous splendour, with a sea of undergrowth wavered into golden billows by every passing

wind.

Old Robert Williamson sat opposite him, on a bench. He was a small, lean old man, half lost in loose

clothes that seemed far too large for him. When he spoke his voice was as thin and squeaky as he

appeared to be himself.

The other end of the bench was occupied by Timothy, sleek and complacent, with a snowy breast

and white paws. After old Robert had taken a mouthful of anything he gave a piece to Timothy, who

ate it daintily and purred resonant gratitude.

"You see we're busy waiting for you, Master," said old Robert. "You're late this evening. Keep any of the youngsters in? That's a foolish way of punishing them, as hard on yourself as on them. One

teacher we had four years ago used to lock them in and go home. Then he'd go back in an hour and

let them out—if they were there. They weren't always. Tom Ferguson kicked the panels out of the

old door once and got out that way. We put a new door of double plank in that they couldn't kick

out."

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"I stayed in the schoolroom to do some work," said Eric briefly.

"Well, you've missed Alexander Tracy. He was here to find out if you could play checkers, and,

when I told him you could, he left word for you to go up and have a game some evening soon. Don't

beat him too often, even if you can. You'll need to stand in with him, I tell you, Master, for he's got a son that may brew trouble for you when he starts in to go to school. Seth Tracy's a young imp, and

he'd far sooner be in mischief than eat. He tries to run on every new teacher and he's run two clean

out of the school. But he met his match in Mr. West. William Tracy's boys now—you won't have a

scrap of bother with THEM. They're always good because their mother tells them every Sunday that

they'll go straight to hell if they don't behave in school. It's effective. Take some preserve, Master.

You know we don't help things here the way Mrs. Adam Scott does when she has boarders, 'I s'pose

you don't want any of this—nor you—nor you?' Mother, Aleck says old George Wright is having the

time of his life. His wife has gone to Charlottetown to visit her sister and he is his own boss for the

first time since he was married, forty years ago. He's on a regular orgy, Aleck says. He smokes in the

parlour and sits up till eleven o'clock reading dime novels."

"Perhaps I met Mr. Tracy," said Eric. "Is he a tall man, with gray hair and a dark, stern face?"

"No, he's a round, jolly fellow, is Aleck, and he stopped growing pretty much before he'd ever

begun. I reckon the man you mean is Thomas Gordon. I seen him driving down the road too. HE

won't be troubling you with invitations up, small fear of it. The Gordons ain't sociable, to say the

least of it. No, sir! Mother, pass the biscuits to the Master."

"Who was the young fellow he had with him?" asked Eric curiously.

"Neil—Neil Gordon."

"That is a Scotchy name for such a face and eyes. I should rather have expected Guiseppe or Angelo.

The boy looks like an Italian."

"Well, now, you know, Master, I reckon it's likely he does, seeing that that's exactly what he is.

You've hit the nail square on the head. Italyun, yes, sir! Rather too much so, I'm thinking, for decent

folks' taste."

"How has it happened that an Italian boy with a Scotch name is living in a place like Lindsay?"

"Well, Master, it was this way. About twenty-two years ago—WAS it twenty-two, Mother or

twenty-four? Yes, it was twenty-two—'twas the same year our Jim was born and he'd have been

twenty-two if he'd lived, poor little fellow. Well, Master, twenty-two years ago a couple of Italian

pack peddlers came along and called at the Gordon place. The country was swarming with them

then. I useter set the dog on one every day on an average.

"Well, these peddlers were man and wife, and the woman took sick up there at the Gordon place, and

Janet Gordon took her in and nursed her. A baby was born the next day, and the woman died. Then

the first thing anybody knew the father skipped clean out, pack and all, and was never seen or heard

tell of afterwards. The Gordons were left with the fine youngster to their hands. Folks advised them

to send him to the Orphan Asylum, and 'twould have been the wisest plan, but the Gordons were

never fond of taking advice. Old James Gordon was living then, Thomas and Janet's father, and he

said he would never turn a child out of his door. He was a masterful old man and liked to be boss.

Folks used to say he had a grudge against the sun 'cause it rose and set without his say so. Anyhow,

they kept the baby. They called him Neil and had him baptized same as any Christian child. He's

always lived there. They did well enough by him. He was sent to school and taken to church and

treated like one of themselves. Some folks think they made too much of him. It doesn't always do

with that kind, for 'what's bred in bone is mighty apt to come out in flesh,' if 'taint kept down pretty

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well. Neil's smart and a great worker, they tell me. But folks hereabouts don't like him. They say he

ain't to be trusted further'n you can see him, if as far. It's certain he's awful hot tempered, and one

time when he was going to school he near about killed a boy he'd took a spite to—choked him till he

was black in the face and Neil had to be dragged off."

"Well now, father, you know they teased him terrible," protested Mrs. Williamson. "The poor boy had a real hard time when he went to school, Master. The other children were always casting things

up to him and calling him names."

"Oh, I daresay they tormented him a lot," admitted her husband. "He's a great hand at the fiddle and likes company. He goes to the harbour a good deal. But they say he takes sulky spells when he hasn't

a word to throw to a dog. 'Twouldn't be any wonder, living with the Gordons. They're all as queer as

Dick's hat-band."

"Father, you shouldn't talk so about your neighbours," said his wife rebukingly.

"Well now, Mother, you know they are, if you'd only speak up honest. But you're like old Aunt

Nancy Scott, you never say anything uncharitable except in the way of business. You know the

Gordons ain't like other people and never were and never will be. They're about the only queer folks

we have in Lindsay, Master, except old Peter Cook, who keeps twenty-five cats. Lord, Master, think

of it! What chanct would a poor mouse have? None of the rest of us are queer, leastwise, we hain't

found it out if we are. But, then, we're mighty uninteresting, I'm bound to admit that."

"Where do the Gordons live?" asked Eric, who had grown used to holding fast to a given point of inquiry through all the bewildering mazes of old Robert's conversation.

"Away up yander, half a mile in from Radnor road, with a thick spruce wood atween them and all the

rest of the world. They never go away anywheres, except to church—they never miss that—and

nobody goes there. There's just old Thomas, and his sister Janet, and a niece of theirs, and this here

Neil we've been talking about. They're a queer, dour, cranky lot, and I WILL say it, Mother. There,

give your old man a cup of tea and never mind the way his tongue runs on. Speaking of tea, do you

know Mrs. Adam Palmer and Mrs. Jim Martin took tea together at Foster Reid's last Wednesday

afternoon?"

"No, why, I thought they were on bad terms," said Mrs. Williamson, betraying a little feminine

curiosity.

"So they are, so they are. But they both happened to visit Mrs. Foster the same afternoon and neither would leave because that would be knuckling down to the other. So they stuck it out, on opposite

sides of the parlour. Mrs. Foster says she never spent such an uncomfortable afternoon in all her life

before. She would talk a spell to one and then t'other. And they kept talking TO Mrs. Foster and AT

each other. Mrs. Foster says she really thought she'd have to keep them all night, for neither would

start to go home afore the other. Finally Jim Martin came in to look for his wife, 'cause he thought

she must have got stuck in the marsh, and that solved the problem. Master, you ain't eating anything.

Don't mind my stopping; I was at it half an hour afore you come, and anyway I'm in a hurry. My

hired boy went home to-day. He heard the rooster crow at twelve last night and he's gone home to

see which of his family is dead. He knows one of 'em is. He heard a rooster crow in the middle of the

night onct afore and the next day he got word that his second cousin down at Souris was dead.

Mother, if the Master don't want any more tea, ain't there some cream for Timothy?"

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CHAPTER V. A PHANTOM OF DELIGHT

Shortly before sunset that evening Eric went for a walk. When he did not go to the shore he liked to

indulge in long tramps through the Lindsay fields and woods, in the mellowness of "the sweet 'o the

year." Most of the Lindsay houses were built along the main road, which ran parallel to the shore, or about the stores at "The Corner." The farms ran back from them into solitudes of woods and pasture lands.

Eric struck southwest from the Williamson homestead, in a direction he had not hitherto explored,

and walked briskly along, enjoying the witchery of the season all about him in earth and air and sky.

He felt it and loved it and yielded to it, as anyone of clean life and sane pulses must do.

The spruce wood in which he presently found himself was smitten through with arrows of ruby light

from the setting sun. He went through it, walking up a long, purple aisle where the wood-floor was

brown and elastic under his feet, and came out beyond it on a scene which surprised him.

No house was in sight, but he found himself looking into an orchard; an old orchard, evidently long

neglected and forsaken. But an orchard dies hard; and this one, which must have been a very

delightful spot once, was delightful still, none the less so for the air of gentle melancholy which

seemed to pervade it, the melancholy which invests all places that have once been the scenes of joy

and pleasure and young life, and are so no longer, places where hearts have throbbed, and pulses

thrilled, and eyes brightened, and merry voices echoed. The ghosts of these things seem to linger in

their old haunts through many empty years.

The orchard was large and long, enclosed in a tumbledown old fence of longers bleached to a silvery

gray in the suns of many lost summers. At regular intervals along the fence were tall, gnarled fir

trees, and an evening wind, sweeter than that which blew over the beds of spice from Lebanon, was

singing in their tops, an earth-old song with power to carry the soul back to the dawn of time.

Eastward, a thick fir wood grew, beginning with tiny treelets just feathering from the grass, and

grading up therefrom to the tall veterans of the mid-grove, unbrokenly and evenly, giving the effect

of a solid, sloping green wall, so beautifully compact that it looked as if it had been clipped into its

velvet surface by art.

Most of the orchard was grown over lushly with grass; but at the end where Eric stood there was a

square, treeless place which had evidently once served as a homestead garden. Old paths were still

visible, bordered by stones and large pebbles. There were two clumps of lilac trees; one blossoming

in royal purple, the other in white. Between them was a bed ablow with the starry spikes of June

lilies. Their penetrating, haunting fragrance distilled on the dewy air in every soft puff of wind.

Along the fence rosebushes grew, but it was as yet too early in the season for roses.

Beyond was the orchard proper, three long rows of trees with green avenues between, each tree

standing in a wonderful blow of pink and white.

The charm of the place took sudden possession of Eric as nothing had ever done before. He was not

given to romantic fancies; but the orchard laid hold of him subtly and drew him to itself, and he was

never to be quite his own man again. He went into it over one of the broken panels of fence, and so,

unknowing, went forward to meet all that life held for him.

He walked the length of the orchard's middle avenue between long, sinuous boughs picked out with

delicate, rose-hearted bloom. When he reached its southern boundary he flung himself down in a

grassy corner of the fence where another lilac bush grew, with ferns and wild blue violets at its roots.

From where he now was he got a glimpse of a house about a quarter of a mile away, its gray gable

peering out from a dark spruce wood. It seemed a dull, gloomy, remote place, and he did not know

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who lived there.

He had a wide outlook to the west, over far hazy fields and misty blue intervales. The sun had just

set, and the whole world of green meadows beyond swam in golden light. Across a long valley

brimmed with shadow were uplands of sunset, and great sky lakes of saffron and rose where a soul

might lose itself in colour. The air was very fragrant with the baptism of the dew, and the odours of a

bed of wild mint upon which he had trampled. Robins were whistling, clear and sweet and sudden, in

the woods all about him.

"This is a veritable 'haunt of ancient peace,'" quoted Eric, looking around with delighted eyes. "I could fall asleep here, dream dreams and see visions. What a sky! Could anything be diviner than

that fine crystal eastern blue, and those frail white clouds that look like woven lace? What a

dizzying, intoxicating fragrance lilacs have! I wonder if perfume could set a man drunk. Those apple

trees now—why, what is that?"

Eric started up and listened. Across the mellow stillness, mingled with the croon of the wind in the

trees and the flute-like calls of the robins, came a strain of delicious music, so beautiful and fantastic that Eric held his breath in astonishment and delight. Was he dreaming? No, it was real music, the

music of a violin played by some hand inspired with the very spirit of harmony. He had never heard

anything like it; and, somehow, he felt quite sure that nothing exactly like it ever had been heard

before; he believed that that wonderful music was coming straight from the soul of the unseen

violinist, and translating itself into those most airy and delicate and exquisite sounds for the first

time; the very soul of music, with all sense and earthliness refined away.

It was an elusive, haunting melody, strangely suited to the time and place; it had in it the sigh of the

wind in the woods, the eerie whispering of the grasses at dewfall, the white thoughts of the June

lilies, the rejoicing of the apple blossoms; all the soul of all the old laughter and song and tears and

gladness and sobs the orchard had ever known in the lost years; and besides all this, there was in it a

pitiful, plaintive cry as of some imprisoned thing calling for freedom and utterance.

At first Eric listened as a man spellbound, mutely and motionlessly, lost in wonderment. Then a very

natural curiosity overcame him. Who in Lindsay could play a violin like that? And who was playing

so here, in this deserted old orchard, of all places in the world?

He rose and walked up the long white avenue, going as slowly and silently as possible, for he did not

wish to interrupt the player. When he reached the open space of the garden he stopped short in new

amazement and was again tempted into thinking he must certainly be dreaming.

Under the big branching white lilac tree was an old, sagging, wooden bench; and on this bench a girl

was sitting, playing on an old brown violin. Her eyes were on the faraway horizon and she did not

see Eric. For a few moments he stood there and looked at her. The pictures she made photographed

itself on his vision to the finest detail, never to be blotted from his book of remembrance. To his

latest day Eric Marshall will be able to recall vividly that scene as he saw it then—the velvet

darkness of the spruce woods, the overarching sky of soft brilliance, the swaying lilac blossoms, and

amid it all the girl on the old bench with the violin under her chin.

He had, in his twenty-four years of life, met hundreds of pretty women, scores of handsome women,

a scant half dozen of really beautiful women. But he knew at once, beyond all possibility of question

or doubt, that he had never seen or imagined anything so exquisite as this girl of the orchard. Her

loveliness was so perfect that his breath almost went from him in his first delight of it.

Her face was oval, marked in every cameo-like line and feature with that expression of absolute,

flawless purity, found in the angels and Madonnas of old paintings, a purity that held in it no faintest

strain of earthliness. Her head was bare, and her thick, jet-black hair was parted above her forehead

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and hung in two heavy lustrous braids over her shoulders. Her eyes were of such a blue as Eric had

never seen in eyes before, the tint of the sea in the still, calm light that follows after a fine sunset; they were as luminous as the stars that came out over Lindsay Harbour in the afterglow, and were

fringed about with very long, soot-black lashes, and arched over by most delicately pencilled dark

eyebrows. Her skin was as fine and purely tinted as the heart of a white rose. The collarless dress of

pale blue print she wore revealed her smooth, slender throat; her sleeves were rolled up above her

elbows and the hand which guided the bow of her violin was perhaps the most beautiful thing about

her, perfect in shape and texture, firm and white, with rosy-nailed taper fingers. One long, drooping

plume of lilac blossom lightly touched her hair and cast a wavering shadow over the flower-like face

beneath it.

There was something very child-like about her, and yet at least eighteen sweet years must have gone

to the making of her. She seemed to be playing half unconsciously, as if her thoughts were far away

in some fair dreamland of the skies. But presently she looked away from "the bourne of sunset," and her lovely eyes fell on Eric, standing motionless before her in the shadow of the apple tree.

The sudden change that swept over her was startling. She sprang to her feet, the music breaking in

mid-strain and the bow slipping from her hand to the grass. Every hint of colour fled from her face

and she trembled like one of the wind-stirred June lilies.

"I beg your pardon," said Eric hastily. "I am sorry that I have alarmed you. But your music was so beautiful that I did not remember you were not aware of my presence here. Please forgive me."

He stopped in dismay, for he suddenly realized that the expression on the girl's face was one of

terror—not merely the startled alarm of a shy, childlike creature who had thought herself alone, but

absolute terror. It was betrayed in her blanched and quivering lips and in the widely distended blue

eyes that stared back into his with the expression of some trapped wild thing.

It hurt him that any woman should look at him in such a fashion, at him who had always held

womanhood in such reverence.

"Don't look so frightened," he said gently, thinking only of calming her fear, and speaking as he would to a child. "I will not hurt you. You are safe, quite safe."

In his eagerness to reassure her he took an unconscious step forward. Instantly she turned, and,

without a sound, fled across the orchard, through a gap in the northern fence and along what seemed

to be a lane bordering the fir wood beyond and arched over with wild cherry trees misty white in the

gathering gloom. Before Eric could recover his wits she had vanished from his sight among the firs.

He stooped and picked up the violin bow, feeling slightly foolish and very much annoyed.

"Well, this is a most mysterious thing," he said, somewhat impatiently. "Am I bewitched? Who was she? WHAT was she? Can it be possible that she is a Lindsay girl? And why in the name of all that's

provoking should she be so frightened at the mere sight of me? I have never thought I was a

particularly hideous person, but certainly this adventure has not increased my vanity to any

perceptible extent. Perhaps I have wandered into an enchanted orchard, and been outwardly

transformed into an ogre. Now that I have come to think of it, there is something quite uncanny

about the place. Anything might happen here. It is no common orchard for the production of

marketable apples, that is plain to be seen. No, it's a most unwholesome locality; and the sooner I

make my escape from it the better."

He glanced about it with a whimsical smile. The light was fading rapidly and the orchard was full of

soft, creeping shadows and silences. It seemed to wink sleepy eyes of impish enjoyment at his

perplexity. He laid the violin bow down on the old bench.

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"Well, there is no use in my following her, and I have no right to do so even if it were of use. But I certainly wish she hadn't fled in such evident terror. Eyes like hers were never meant to express

anything but tenderness and trust. Why—why—WHY was she so frightened? And who—who—

WHO—can she be?"

All the way home, over fields and pastures that were beginning to be moonlight silvered he pondered

the mystery.

"Let me see," he reflected. "Mr. Williamson was describing the Lindsay girls for my benefit the other evening. If I remember rightly he said that there were four handsome ones in the district. What

were their names? Florrie Woods, Melissa Foster—no, Melissa Palmer—Emma Scott, and Jennie

May Ferguson. Can she be one of them? No, it is a flagrant waste of time and gray matter supposing

it. That girl couldn't be a Florrie or a Melissa or an Emma, while Jennie May is completely out of the

question. Well, there is some bewitchment in the affair. Of that I'm convinced. So I'd better forget all

about it."

But Eric found that it was impossible to forget all about it. The more he tried to forget, the more

keenly and insistently he remembered. The girl's exquisite face haunted him and the mystery of her

tantalized him.

True, he knew that, in all likelihood, he might easily solve the problem by asking the Williamsons

about her. But somehow, to his own surprise, he found that he shrank from doing this. He felt that it

was impossible to ask Robert Williamson and probably have the girl's name overflowed in a stream

of petty gossip concerning her and all her antecedents and collaterals to the third and fourth

generation. If he had to ask any one it should be Mrs. Williamson; but he meant to find out the secret

for himself if it were at all possible.

He had planned to go to the harbour the next evening. One of the lobstermen had promised to take

him out cod-fishing. But instead he wandered southwest over the fields again.

He found the orchard easily—he had half expected NOT to find it. It was still the same fragrant,

grassy, wind-haunted spot. But it had no occupant and the violin bow was gone from the old bench.

"Perhaps she tiptoed back here for it by the light o' the moon," thought Eric, pleasing his fancy by the vision of a lithe, girlish figure stealing with a beating heart through mingled shadow and moonshine.

"I wonder if she will possibly come this evening, or if I have frightened her away for ever. I'll hide me behind this spruce copse and wait."

Eric waited until dark, but no music sounded through the orchard and no one came to it. The

keenness of his disappointment surprised him, nay more, it vexed him. What nonsense to be so

worked up because a little girl he had seen for five minutes failed to appear! Where was his common

sense, his "gumption," as old Robert Williamson would have said? Naturally a man liked to look at a pretty face. But was that any reason why he should feel as if life were flat, stale, and unprofitable

simply because he could not look at it? He called himself a fool and went home in a petulant mood.

Arriving there, he plunged fiercely into solving algebraical equations and working out geometry

exercises, determined to put out of his head forthwith all vain imaginings of an enchanted orchard,

white in the moonshine, with lilts of elfin music echoing down its long arcades.

The next day was Sunday and Eric went to church twice. The Williamson pew was one of the side

ones at the top of the church and its occupants practically faced the congregation. Eric looked at

every girl and woman in the audience, but he saw nothing of the face which, setting will power and

common sense flatly at defiance, haunted his memory like a star.

Thomas Gordon was there, sitting alone in his long, empty pew near the top of the building; and Neil

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Gordon sang in the choir which occupied the front pew of the gallery. He had a powerful and

melodious, though untrained voice, which dominated the singing and took the colour out of the

weaker, more commonplace tones of the other singers. He was well-dressed in a suit of dark blue

serge, with a white collar and tie. But Eric idly thought it did not become him so well as the working

clothes in which he had first seen him. He was too obviously dressed up, and he looked coarser and

more out of harmony with his surroundings.

For two days Eric refused to let himself think of the orchard. Monday evening he went cod-fishing,

and Tuesday evening he went up to play checkers with Alexander Tracy. Alexander won all the

games so easily that he never had any respect for Eric Marshall again.

"Played like a feller whose thoughts were wool gathering," he complained to his wife. "He'll never make a checker player—never in this world."

CHAPTER VI. THE STORY OF KILMENY

Wednesday evening Eric went to the orchard again; and again he was disappointed. He went home,

determined to solve the mystery by open inquiry. Fortune favoured him, for he found Mrs.

Williamson alone, sitting by the west window of her kitchen and knitting at a long gray sock. She

hummed softly to herself as she knitted, and Timothy slept blackly at her feet. She looked at Eric

with quiet affection in her large, candid eyes. She had liked Mr. West. But Eric had found his way

into the inner chamber of her heart, by reason that his eyes were so like those of the little son she had buried in the Lindsay churchyard many years before.

"Mrs. Williamson," said Eric, with an affectation of carelessness, "I chanced on an old deserted orchard back behind the woods over there last week, a charming bit of wilderness. Do you know

whose it is?"

"I suppose it must be the old Connors orchard," answered Mrs. Williamson after a moment's

reflection. "I had forgotten all about it. It must be all of thirty years since Mr. and Mrs. Connors moved away. Their house and barns were burned down and they sold the land to Thomas Gordon

and went to live in town. They're both dead now. Mr. Connors used to be very proud of his orchard.

There weren't many orchards in Lindsay then, though almost everybody has one now."

"There was a young girl in it, playing on a violin," said Eric, annoyed to find that it cost him an effort to speak of her, and that the blood mounted to his face as he did so. "She ran away in great

alarm as soon as she saw me, although I do not think I did or said anything to frighten or vex her. I

have no idea who she was. Do you know?"

Mrs. Williamson did not make an immediate reply. She laid down her knitting and gazed out of the

window as if pondering seriously some question in her own mind. Finally she said, with an

intonation of keen interest in her voice,

"I suppose it must have been Kilmeny Gordon, Master."

"Kilmeny Gordon? Do you mean the niece of Thomas Gordon of whom your husband spoke?"

"Yes."

Page 20 of 66

"I can hardly believe that the girl I saw can be a member of Thomas Gordon's family."

"Well, if it wasn't Kilmeny Gordon I don't know who it could have been. There is no other house

near that orchard and I've heard she plays the violin. If it was Kilmeny you've seen what very few

people in Lindsay have ever seen, Master. And those few have never seen her close by. I have never

laid eyes on her myself. It's no wonder she ran away, poor girl. She isn't used to seeing strangers."

"I'm rather glad if that was the sole reason of her flight," said Eric. "I admit I didn't like to see any girl so frightened of me as she appeared to be. She was as white as paper, and so terrified that she

never uttered a word, but fled like a deer to cover."

"Well, she couldn't have spoken a word in any case," said Mrs. Williamson quietly. "Kilmeny Gordon is dumb."

Eric sat in dismayed silence for a moment. That beautiful creature afflicted in such a fashion—why,

it was horrible! Mingled with his dismay was a strange pang of personal regret and disappointment.

"It couldn't have been Kilmeny Gordon, then," he protested at last, remembering. "The girl I saw played on the violin exquisitely. I never heard anything like it. It is impossible that a deaf mute could play like that."

"Oh, she isn't deaf, Master," responded Mrs. Williamson, looking at Eric keenly through her

spectacles. She picked up her knitting and fell to work again. "That is the strange part of it, if

anything about her can be stranger than another. She can hear as well as anybody and understands

everything that is said to her. But she can't speak a word and never could, at least, so they say. The

truth is, nobody knows much about her. Janet and Thomas never speak of her, and Neil won't either.

He has been well questioned, too, you can depend on that; but he won't ever say a word about

Kilmeny and he gets mad if folks persist."

"Why isn't she to be spoken of?" queried Eric impatiently. "What is the mystery about her?"

"It's a sad story, Master. I suppose the Gordons look on her existence as a sort of disgrace. For my own part, I think it's terrible, the way she's been brought up. But the Gordons are very strange

people, Mr. Marshall. I kind of reproved father for saying so, you remember, but it is true. They have

very strange ways. And you've really seen Kilmeny? What does she look like? I've heard that she

was handsome. Is it true?"

"I thought her very beautiful," said Eric rather curtly. "But HOW has she been brought up, Mrs.

Williamson? And why?"

"Well, I might as well tell you the whole story, Master. Kilmeny is the niece of Thomas and Janet

Gordon. Her mother was Margaret Gordon, their younger sister. Old James Gordon came out from

Scotland. Janet and Thomas were born in the Old Country and were small children when they came

here. They were never very sociable folks, but still they used to visit out some then, and people used

to go there. They were kind and honest people, even if they were a little peculiar.

"Mrs. Gordon died a few years after they came out, and four years later James Gordon went home to

Scotland and brought a new wife back with him. She was a great deal younger than he was and a

very pretty woman, as my mother often told me. She was friendly and gay and liked social life. The

Gordon place was a very different sort of place after she came there, and even Janet and Thomas got

thawed out and softened down a good bit. They were real fond of their stepmother, I've heard. Then,

six years after she was married, the second Mrs. Gordon died too. She died when Margaret was born.

They say James Gordon almost broke his heart over it.

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"Janet brought Margaret up. She and Thomas just worshipped the child and so did their father. I

knew Margaret Gordon well once. We were just the same age and we set together in school. We

were always good friends until she turned against all the world.

"She was a strange girl in some ways even then, but I always liked her, though a great many people

didn't. She had some bitter enemies, but she had some devoted friends too. That was her way. She

made folks either hate or love her. Those who did love her would have gone through fire and water

for her.

"When she grew up she was very pretty—tall and splendid, like a queen, with great thick braids of

black hair and red, red cheeks and lips. Everybody who saw her looked at her a second time. She was

a little vain of her beauty, I think, Master. And she was proud, oh, she was very proud. She liked to

be first in everything, and she couldn't bear not to show to good advantage. She was dreadful

determined, too. You couldn't budge her an inch, Master, when she once had made up her mind on

any point. But she was warm-hearted and generous. She could sing like an angel and she was very

clever. She could learn anything with just one look at it and she was terrible fond of reading.

"When I'm talking about her like this it all comes back to me, just what she was like and how she

looked and spoke and acted, and little ways she had of moving her hands and head. I declare it

almost seems as if she was right here in this room instead of being over there in the churchyard. I

wish you'd light the lamp, Master. I feel kind of nervous."

Eric rose and lighted the lamp, rather wondering at Mrs. Williamson's unusual exhibition of nerves.

She was generally so calm and composed.

"Thank you, Master. That's better. I won't be fancying now that Margaret Gordon's here listening to

what I'm saying. I had the feeling so strong a moment ago.

"I suppose you think I'm a long while getting to Kilmeny, but I'm coming to that. I didn't mean to

talk so much about Margaret, but somehow my thoughts got taken up with her.

"Well, Margaret passed the Board and went to Queen's Academy and got a teacher's license. She

passed pretty well up when she came out, but Janet told me she cried all night after the pass list came

out because there were some ahead of her.

"She went to teach school over at Radnor. It was there she met a man named Ronald Fraser.

Margaret had never had a beau before. She could have had any young man in Lindsay if she had

wanted him, but she wouldn't look at one of them. They said it was because she thought nobody was

good enough for her, but that wasn't the way of it at all, Master. I knew, because Margaret and I used

to talk of those matters, as girls do. She didn't believe in going with anybody unless it was somebody

she thought everything of. And there was nobody in Lindsay she cared that much for.

"This Ronald Fraser was a stranger from Nova Scotia and nobody knew much about him. He was a

widower, although he was only a young man. He had set up store-keeping in Radnor and was doing

well. He was real handsome and had taking ways women like. It was said that all the Radnor girls

were in love with him, but I don't think his worst enemy could have said he flirted with them. He

never took any notice of them; but the very first time he saw Margaret Gordon he fell in love with

her and she with him.

"They came over to church in Lindsay together the next Sunday and everybody said it would be a

match. Margaret looked lovely that day, so gentle and womanly. She had been used to hold her head

pretty high, but that day she held it drooping a little and her black eyes cast down. Ronald Fraser was

very tall and fair, with blue eyes. They made as handsome a couple as I ever saw.

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"But old James Gordon and Thomas and Janet didn't much approve of him. I saw that plain enough

one time I was there and he brought Margaret home from Radnor Friday night. I guess they wouldn't

have liked anybody, though, who come after Margaret. They thought nobody was good enough for

her.

"But Margaret coaxed them all round in time. She could do pretty near anything with them, they

were so fond and proud of her. Her father held out the longest, but finally he give in and consented

for her to marry Ronald Fraser.

"They had a big wedding, too—all the neighbours were asked. Margaret always liked to make a

display. I was her bridesmaid, Master. I helped her dress and nothing would please her; she wanted

to look that nice for Ronald's sake. She was a handsome bride; dressed in white, with red roses in her

hair and at her breast. She wouldn't wear white flowers; she said they looked too much like funeral

flowers. She looked like a picture. I can see her this minute, as plain as plain, just as she was that

night, blushing and turning pale by turns, and looking at Ronald with her eyes of love. If ever a girl

loved a man with all her heart Margaret Gordon did. It almost made me feel frightened. She gave

him the worship it isn't right to give anybody but God, Master, and I think that is always punished.

"They went to live at Radnor and for a little while everything went well. Margaret had a nice house, and was gay and happy. She dressed beautiful and entertained a good deal. Then—well, Ronald

Fraser's first wife turned up looking for him! She wasn't dead after all.

"Oh, there was terrible scandal, Master. The talk and gossip was something dreadful. Every one you

met had a different story, and it was hard to get at the truth. Some said Ronald Fraser had known all

the time that his wife wasn't dead, and had deceived Margaret. But I don't think he did. He swore he

didn't. They hadn't been very happy together, it seems. Her mother made trouble between them. Then

she went to visit her mother in Montreal, and died in the hospital there, so the word came to Ronald.

Perhaps he believed it a little too readily, but that he DID believe it I never had a doubt. Her story

was that it was another woman of the same name. When she found out Ronald thought her dead she

and her mother agreed to let him think so. But when she heard he had got married again she thought

she'd better let him know the truth.

"It all sounded like a queer story and I suppose you couldn't blame people for not believing it too

readily. But I've always felt it was true. Margaret didn't think so, though. She believed that Ronald

Fraser had deceived her, knowing all the time that he couldn't make her his lawful wife. She turned

against him and hated him just as much as she had loved him before.

"Ronald Fraser went away with his real wife, and in less than a year word came of his death. They

said he just died of a broken heart, nothing more nor less.

"Margaret came home to her father's house. From the day that she went over its threshold, she never

came out until she was carried out in her coffin three years ago. Not a soul outside of her own family

ever saw her again. I went to see her, but Janet told me she wouldn't see me. It was foolish of

Margaret to act so. She hadn't done anything real wrong; and everybody was sorry for her and would

have helped her all they could. But I reckon pity cut her as deep as blame could have done, and

deeper, because you see, Master, she was so proud she couldn't bear it.

"They say her father was hard on her, too; and that was unjust if it was true. Janet and Thomas felt the disgrace, too. The people that had been in the habit of going to the Gordon place soon stopped

going, for they could see they were not welcome.

"Old James Gordon died that winter. He never held his head up again after the scandal. He had been

an elder in the church, but he handed in his resignation right away and nobody could persuade him to

withdraw it.

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"Kilmeny was born in the spring, but nobody ever saw her, except the minister who baptized her.

She was never taken to church or sent to school. Of course, I suppose there wouldn't have been any

use in her going to school when she couldn't speak, and it's likely Margaret taught her all she could

be taught herself. But it was dreadful that she was never taken to church, or let go among the

children and young folks. And it was a real shame that nothing was ever done to find out why she

couldn't talk, or if she could be cured.

"Margaret Gordon died three years ago, and everybody in Lindsay went to the funeral. But they

didn't see her. The coffin lid was screwed down. And they didn't see Kilmeny either. I would have

loved to see HER for Margaret's sake, but I didn't want to see poor Margaret. I had never seen her

since the night she was a bride, for I had left Lindsay on a visit just after that, and what I came home

the scandal had just broken out. I remembered Margaret in all her pride and beauty, and I couldn't

have borne to look at her dead face and see the awful changes I knew must be there.

"It was thought perhaps Janet and Thomas would take Kilmeny out after her mother was gone, but

they never did, so I suppose they must have agreed with Margaret about the way she had been

brought up. I've often felt sorry for the poor girl, and I don't think her people did right by her, even if she was mysteriously afflicted. She must have had a very sad, lonely life.

"That is the story, Master, and I've been a long time telling it, as I dare say you think. But the past just seemed to be living again for me as I talked. If you don't want to be pestered with questions

about Kilmeny Gordon, Master, you'd better not let on you've seen her."

Eric was not likely to. He had heard all he wanted to know and more.

"So this girl is at the core of a tragedy," he reflected, as he went to his room. "And she is dumb! The pity of it! Kilmeny! The name suits her. She is as lovely and innocent as the heroine of the old

ballad. 'And oh, Kilmeny was fair to see.' But the next line is certainly not so appropriate, for her

eyes were anything but 'still and steadfast'—after she had seen me, at all events."

He tried to put her out of his thoughts, but he could not. The memory of her beautiful face drew him

with a power he could not resist. The next evening he went again to the orchard.

CHAPTER VII. A ROSE OF WOMANHOOD

When he emerged from the spruce wood and entered the orchard his heart gave a sudden leap, and he

felt that the blood rushed madly to his face. She was there, bending over the bed of June lilies in the

centre of the garden plot. He could only see her profile, virginal and white.

He stopped, not wishing to startle her again. When she lifted her head he expected to see her shrink

and flee, but she did not do so; she only grew a little paler and stood motionless, watching him

intently.

Seeing this, he walked slowly towards her, and when he was so close to her that he could hear the

nervous flutter of her breath over her parted, trembling lips, he said very gently,

"Do not be afraid of me. I am a friend, and I do not wish to disturb or annoy you in any way."

She seemed to hesitate a moment. Then she lifted a little slate that hung at her belt, wrote something

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on it rapidly, and held it out to him. He read, in a small distinctive handwriting,

"I am not afraid of you now. Mother told me that all strange men were very wicked and dangerous,

but I do not think you can be. I have thought a great deal about you, and I am sorry I ran away the

other night."

He realized her entire innocence and simplicity. Looking earnestly into her still troubled eyes he

said,

"I would not do you any harm for the world. All men are not wicked, although it is too true that some are so. My name is Eric Marshall and I am teaching in the Lindsay school. You, I think, are Kilmeny

Gordon. I thought your music so very lovely the other evening that I have been wishing ever since

that I might hear it again. Won't you play for me?"

The vague fear had all gone from her eyes by this time, and suddenly she smiled—a merry, girlish,

wholly irresistible smile, which broke through the calm of her face like a gleam of sunlight rippling

over a placid sea. Then she wrote, "I am very sorry that I cannot play this evening. I did not bring my violin with me. But I will bring it to-morrow evening and play for you if you would like to hear me. I

should like to please you."

Again that note of innocent frankness! What a child she was—what a beautiful, ignorant child,

utterly unskilled in the art of hiding her feelings! But why should she hide them? They were as pure

and beautiful as herself. Eric smiled back at her with equal frankness.

"I should like it more than I can say, and I shall be sure to come to-morrow evening if it is fine. But if it is at all damp or unpleasant you must not come. In that case another evening will do. And now

won't you give me some flowers?"

She nodded, with another little smile, and began to pick some of the June lilies, carefully selecting

the most perfect among them. He watched her lithe, graceful motions with delight; every movement

seemed poetry itself. She looked like a very incarnation of Spring—as if all the shimmer of young

leaves and glow of young mornings and evanescent sweetness of young blossoms in a thousand

springs had been embodied in her.

When she came to him, radiant, her hands full of the lilies, a couplet from a favourite poem darted

into his head—

" A bl ossom ver mei l whi t e

That l i ght l y br eaks a f aded f l ower sheat h,

Her e, by God' s r ood, i s t he one mai d f or me. "

The next moment he was angry with himself for his folly. She was, after all, nothing but a child—

and a child set apart from her fellow creatures by her sad defect. He must not let himself think

nonsense.

"Thank you. These June lilies are the sweetest flowers the spring brings us. Do you know that their

real name is the white narcissus?" She looked pleased and interested.

"No, I did not know," she wrote. "I have often read of the white narcissus and wondered what it was like. I never thought of it being the same as my dear June lilies. I am glad you told me. I love flowers

very much. They are my very good friends."

"You couldn't help being friends with the lilies. Like always takes to like," said Eric. "Come and sit down on the old bench—here, where you were sitting that night I frightened you so badly. I could

Page 25 of 66

not imagine who or what you were. Sometimes I thought I had dreamed you—only," he added under

his breath and unheard by her, "I could never have dreamed anything half so lovely."

She sat down beside him on the old bench and looked unshrinkingly in his face. There was no

boldness in her glance—nothing but the most perfect, childlike trust and confidence. If there had

been any evil in his heart—any skulking thought, he was afraid to acknowledge—those eyes must

have searched it out and shamed it. But he could meet them unafraid. Then she wrote,

"I was very much frightened. You must have thought me very silly, but I had never seen any man

except Uncle Thomas and Neil and the egg peddler. And you are different from them—oh, very,

very different. I was afraid to come back here the next evening. And yet, somehow, I wanted to

come. I did not want you to think I did not know how to behave. I sent Neil back for my bow in the

morning. I could not do without it. I cannot speak, you know. Are you sorry?"

"I am very sorry for your sake."

"Yes, but what I mean is, would you like me better if I could speak like other people?"

"No, it does not make any difference in that way, Kilmeny. By the way, do you mind my calling you

Kilmeny?"

She looked puzzled and wrote, "What else should you call me? That is my name. Everybody calls

me that."

"But I am such a stranger to you that perhaps you would wish me to call you Miss Gordon."

"Oh, no, I would not like that," she wrote quickly, with a distressed look on her face. "Nobody ever calls me that. It would make me feel as if I were not myself but somebody else. And you do not seem

like a stranger to me. Is there any reason why you should not call me Kilmeny?"

"No reason whatever, if you will allow me the privilege. You have a very lovely name—the very

name you ought to have."

"I am glad you like it. Do you know that I was called after my grandmother and she was called after

a girl in a poem? Aunt Janet has never liked my name, although she liked my grandmother. But I am

glad you like both my name and me. I was afraid you would not like me because I cannot speak."

"You can speak through your music, Kilmeny."

She looked pleased. "How well you understand," she wrote. "Yes, I cannot speak or sing as other people can, but I can make my violin say things for me."

"Do you compose your own music?" he asked. But he saw she did not understand him. "I mean, did any one ever teach you the music you played here that evening?"

"Oh, no. It just came as I thought. It has always been that way. When I was very little Neil taught me to hold the violin and the bow, and the rest all came of itself. My violin once belonged to Neil, but he

gave it to me. Neil is very good and kind to me, but I like you better. Tell me about yourself."

The wonder of her grew upon him with every passing moment. How lovely she was! What dear little

ways and gestures she had—ways and gestures as artless and unstudied as they were effective. And

how strangely little her dumbness seemed to matter after all! She wrote so quickly and easily, her

eyes and smile gave such expression to her mobile face, that voice was hardly missed.

Page 26 of 66

They lingered in the orchard until the long, languid shadows of the trees crept to their feet. It was

just after sunset and the distant hills were purple against the melting saffron of the sky in the west

and the crystalline blue of the sky in the south. Eastward, just over the fir woods, were clouds, white

and high heaped like snow mountains, and the westernmost of them shone with a rosy glow as of

sunset on an Alpine height.

The higher worlds of air were still full of light—perfect, stainless light, unmarred of earth shadow;

but down in the orchard and under the spruces the light had almost gone, giving place to a green,

dewy dusk, made passionately sweet with the breath of the apple blossoms and mint, and the

balsamic odours that rained down upon them from the firs.

Eric told her of his life, and the life in the great outer world, in which she was girlishly and eagerly

interested. She asked him many questions about it—direct and incisive questions which showed that

she had already formed decided opinions and views about it. Yet it was plain to be seen that she did

not regard it as anything she might ever share herself. Hers was the dispassionate interest with which

she might have listened to a tale of the land of fairy or of some great empire long passed away from

earth.

Eric discovered that she had read a great deal of poetry and history, and a few books of biography

and travel. She did not know what a novel meant and had never heard of one. Curiously enough, she

was well informed regarding politics and current events, from the weekly paper for which her uncle

subscribed.

"I never read the newspaper while mother was alive," she wrote, "nor any poetry either. She taught me to read and write and I read the Bible all through many times and some of the histories. After

mother died Aunt Janet gave me all her books. She had a great many. Most of them had been given

to her as prizes when she was a girl at school, and some of them had been given to her by my father.

Do you know the story of my father and mother?"

Eric nodded.

"Yes, Mrs. Williamson told me all about it. She was a friend of your mother."

"I am glad you have heard it. It is so sad that I would not like to tell it, but you will understand everything better because you know. I never heard it until just before mother died. Then she told me

all. I think she had thought father was to blame for the trouble; but before she died she told me she

believed that she had been unjust to him and that he had not known. She said that when people were

dying they saw things more clearly and she saw she had made a mistake about father. She said she

had many more things she wanted to tell me, but she did not have time to tell them because she died

that night. It was a long while before I had the heart to read her books. But when I did I thought them

so beautiful. They were poetry and it was like music put into words."

"I will bring you some books to read, if you would like them," said Eric.

Her great blue eyes gleamed with interest and delight.

"Oh, thank you, I would like it very much. I have read mine over so often that I know them nearly all by heart. One cannot get tired of really beautiful things, but sometimes I feel that I would like some

new books."

"Are you never lonely, Kilmeny?"

"Oh, no, how could I be? There is always plenty for me to do, helping Aunt Janet about the house. I

can do a great many things"—she glanced up at him with a pretty pride as her flying pencil traced

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the words. "I can cook and sew. Aunt Janet says I am a very good housekeeper, and she does not

praise people very often or very much. And then, when I am not helping her, I have my dear, dear

violin. That is all the company I want. But I like to read and hear of the big world so far away and

the people who live there and the things that are done. It must be a very wonderful place."

"Wouldn't you like to go out into it and see its wonders and meet those people yourself?" he asked, smiling at her.

At once he saw that, in some way he could not understand, he had hurt her. She snatched her pencil

and wrote, with such swiftness of motion and energy of expression that it almost seemed as if she

had passionately exclaimed the words aloud,

"No, no, no. I do not want to go anywhere away from home. I do not want ever to see strangers or

have them see me. I could not bear it."

He thought that possibly the consciousness of her defect accounted for this. Yet she did not seem

sensitive about her dumbness and made frequent casual references to it in her written remarks. Or

perhaps it was the shadow on her birth. Yet she was so innocent that it seemed unlikely she could

realize or understand the existence of such a shadow. Eric finally decided that it was merely the

rather morbid shrinking of a sensitive child who had been brought up in an unwholesome and

unnatural way. At last the lengthening shadows warned him that it was time to go.

"You won't forget to come to-morrow evening and play for me," he said, rising reluctantly. She

answered by a quick little shake of her sleek, dark head, and a smile that was eloquent. He watched

her as she walked across the orchard,

" Wi t h t he moon' s beaut y and t he moon' s sof t pace, "

and along the wild cherry lane. At the corner of the firs she paused and waved her hand to him before

turning it.

When Eric reached home old Robert Williamson was having a lunch of bread and milk in the

kitchen. He looked up, with a friendly grin, as Eric strode in, whistling.

"Been having a walk, Master?" he queried.

"Yes," said Eric.

Unconsciously and involuntarily he infused so much triumph into the simple monosyllable that even

old Robert felt it. Mrs. Williamson, who was cutting bread at the end of the table, laid down her

knife and loaf, and looked at the young man with a softly troubled expression in her eyes. She

wondered if he had been back to the Connors orchard—and if he could have seen Kilmeny Gordon

again.

"You didn't discover a gold mine, I s'pose?" said old Robert dryly. "You look as if you might have."

CHAPTER VIII. AT THE GATE OF EDEN

When Eric went to the old Connors orchard the next evening he found Kilmeny waiting for him on

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the bench under the white lilac tree, with the violin in her lap. As soon as she saw him she caught it

up and began to play an airy delicate little melody that sounded like the laughter of daisies.

When it was finished she dropped her bow, and looked up at him with flushed cheeks and

questioning eyes.

"What did that say to you?" she wrote.

"It said something like this," answered Eric, falling into her humour smilingly. "Welcome, my friend. It is a very beautiful evening. The sky is so blue and the apple blossoms so sweet. The wind

and I have been here alone together and the wind is a good companion, but still I am glad to see you.

It is an evening on which it is good to be alive and to wander in an orchard that is fine and white.

Welcome, my friend."

She clapped her hands, looking like a pleased child.

"You are very quick to understand," she wrote. "That was just what I meant. Of course I did not think it in just those words, but that was the FEELING of it. I felt that I was so glad I was alive, and

that the apple blossoms and the white lilacs and the trees and I were all pleased together to see you

come. You are quicker than Neil. He is almost always puzzled to understand my music, and I am

puzzled to understand his. Sometimes it frightens me. It seems as if there were something in it trying

to take hold of me—something I do not like and want to run away from."

Somehow Eric did not like her references to Neil. The idea of that handsome, low-born boy seeing

Kilmeny every day, talking to her, sitting at the same table with her, dwelling under the same roof,

meeting her in the hundred intimacies of daily life, was distasteful to him. He put the thought away

from him, and flung himself down on the long grass at her feet.

"Now play for me, please," he said. "I want to lie here and listen to you."

"And look at you," he might have added. He could not tell which was the greater pleasure. Her

beauty, more wonderful than any pictured loveliness he had ever seen, delighted him. Every tint and

curve and outline of her face was flawless. Her music enthralled him. This child, he told himself as

he listened, had genius. But it was being wholly wasted. He found himself thinking resentfully of the

people who were her guardians, and who were responsible for her strange life. They had done her a

great and irremediable wrong. How dared they doom her to such an existence? If her defect of

utterance had been attended to in time, who knew but that it might have been cured? Now it was

probably too late. Nature had given her a royal birthright of beauty and talent, but their selfish and

unpardonable neglect had made it of no account.

What divine music she lured out of the old violin—merry and sad, gay and sorrowful by turns, music

such as the stars of morning might have made singing together, music that the fairies might have

danced to in their revels among the green hills or on yellow sands, music that might have mourned

over the grave of a dead hope. Then she drifted into a still sweeter strain. As he listened to it he

realized that the whole soul and nature of the girl were revealing themselves to him through her

music—the beauty and purity of her thoughts, her childhood dreams and her maiden reveries. There

was no thought of concealment about her; she could not help the revelation she was unconscious of

making.

At last she laid her violin aside and wrote,

"I have done my best to give you pleasure. It is your turn now. Do you remember a promise you

made me last night? Have you kept it?"

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He gave her the two books he had brought for her—a modern novel and a volume of poetry

unknown to her. He had hesitated a little over the former; but the book was so fine and full of beauty

that he thought it could not bruise the bloom of her innocence ever so slightly. He had no doubts

about the poetry. It was the utterance of one of those great inspired souls whose passing tread has

made the kingdom of their birth and labour a veritable Holy Land.

He read her some of the poems. Then he talked to her of his college days and friends. The minutes

passed very swiftly. There was just then no world for him outside of that old orchard with its falling

blossoms and its shadows and its crooning winds.

Once, when he told her the story of some college pranks wherein the endless feuds of freshmen and

sophomores figured, she clapped her hands together according to her habit, and laughed aloud—a

clear, musical, silvery peal. It fell on Eric's ear with a shock of surprise. He thought it strange that

she could laugh like that when she could not speak. Wherein lay the defect that closed for her the

gates of speech? Was it possible that it could be removed?

"Kilmeny," he said gravely after a moment's reflection, during which he had looked up as she sat with the ruddy sunlight falling through the lilac branches on her bare, silky head like a shower of red

jewels, "do you mind if I ask you something about your inability to speak? Will it hurt you to talk of the matter with me?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, no," she wrote, "I do not mind at all. Of course I am sorry I cannot speak, but I am quite used to the thought and it never hurts me at all."

"Then, Kilmeny, tell me this. Do you know why it is that you are unable to speak, when all your

other faculties are so perfect?"

"No, I do not know at all why I cannot speak. I asked mother once and she told me it was a judgment

on her for a great sin she had committed, and she looked so strangely that I was frightened, and I

never spoke of it to her or anyone else again."

"Were you ever taken to a doctor to have your tongue and organs of speech examined?"

"No. I remember when I was a very little girl that Uncle Thomas wanted to take me to a doctor in

Charlottetown and see if anything could be done for me, but mother would not let him. She said it

would be no use. And I do not think Uncle Thomas thought it would be, either."

"You can laugh very naturally. Can you make any other sound?"

"Yes, sometimes. When I am pleased or frightened I have made little cries. But it is only when I am

not thinking of it at all that I can do that. If I TRY to make a sound I cannot do it at all."

This seemed to Eric more mysterious than ever.

"Do you ever try to speak—to utter words?" he persisted.

"Oh yes, very often. All the time I am saying the words in my head, just as I hear other people saying them, but I never can make my tongue say them. Do not look so sorry, my friend. I am very happy

and I do not mind so very much not being able to speak—only sometimes when I have so many

thoughts and it seems so slow to write them out, some of them get away from me. I must play to you

again. You look too sober."

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She laughed again, picked up her violin, and played a tinkling, roguish little melody as if she were

trying to tease him, looking at Eric over her violin with luminous eyes that dared him to be merry.

Eric smiled; but the puzzled look returned to his face many times that evening. He walked home in a

brown study. Kilmeny's case certainly seemed a strange one, and the more he thought of it the

stranger it seemed.

"It strikes me as something very peculiar that she should be able to make sounds only when she is

not thinking about it," he reflected. "I wish David Baker could examine her. But I suppose that is out of the question. That grim pair who have charge of her would never consent."

CHAPTER IX. THE STRAIGHT SIMPLICITY OF EVE

For the next three weeks Eric Marshall seemed to himself to be living two lives, as distinct from

each other as if he possessed a double personality. In one, he taught the Lindsay district school

diligently and painstakingly; solved problems; argued on theology with Robert Williamson; called at

the homes of his pupils and took tea in state with their parents; went to a rustic dance or two and

played havoc, all unwittingly, with the hearts of the Lindsay maidens.

But this life was a dream of workaday. He only LIVED in the other, which was spent in an old

orchard, grassy and overgrown, where the minutes seemed to lag for sheer love of the spot and the

June winds made wild harping in the old spruces.

Here every evening he met Kilmeny; in that old orchard they garnered hours of quiet happiness

together; together they went wandering in the fair fields of old romance; together they read many

books and talked of many things; and, when they were tired of all else, Kilmeny played to him and

the old orchard echoed with her lovely, fantastic melodies.

At every meeting her beauty came home afresh to him with the old thrill of glad surprise. In the

intervals of absence it seemed to him that she could not possibly be as beautiful as he remembered

her; and then when they met she seemed even more so. He learned to watch for the undisguised light

of welcome that always leaped into her eyes at the sound of his footsteps. She was nearly always

there before him and she always showed that she was glad to see him with the frank delight of a

child watching for a dear comrade.

She was never in the same mood twice. Now she was grave, now gay, now stately, now pensive. But

she was always charming. Thrawn and twisted the old Gordon stock might be, but it had at least this

one offshoot of perfect grace and symmetry. Her mind and heart, utterly unspoiled of the world, were

as beautiful as her face. All the ugliness of existence had passed her by, shrined in her double

solitude of upbringing and muteness.

She was naturally quick and clever. Delightful little flashes of wit and humour sparkled out

occasionally. She could be whimsical—even charmingly capricious. Sometimes innocent mischief

glimmered out in the unfathomable deeps of her blue eyes. Sarcasm, even, was not unknown to her.

Now and then she punctured some harmless bubble of a young man's conceit or masculine

superiority with a biting little line of daintily written script.

She assimilated the ideas in the books they read, speedily, eagerly, and thoroughly, always seizing

on the best and truest, and rejecting the false and spurious and weak with an unfailing intuition at

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which Eric marvelled. Hers was the spear of Ithuriel, trying out the dross of everything and leaving

only the pure gold.

In manner and outlook she was still a child. Yet now and again she was as old as Eve. An expression

would leap into her laughing face, a subtle meaning reveal itself in her smile, that held all the lore of womanhood and all the wisdom of the ages.

Her way of smiling enchanted him. The smile always began far down in her eyes and flowed

outward to her face like a sparkling brook stealing out of shadow into sunshine.

He knew everything about her life. She told him her simple history freely. She often mentioned her

uncle and aunt and seemed to regard them with deep affection. She rarely spoke of her mother. Eric

came somehow to understand, less from what she said than from what she did not say, that Kilmeny,

though she had loved her mother, had always been rather afraid of her. There had not been between

them the natural beautiful confidence of mother and child.

Of Neil, she wrote frequently at first, and seemed very fond of him. Later she ceased to mention him.

Perhaps—for she was marvellously quick to catch and interpret every fleeting change of expression

in his voice and face—she discerned what Eric did not know himself—that his eyes clouded and

grew moody at the mention of Neil's name.

Once she asked him naively,

"Are there many people like you out in the world?"

"Thousands of them," said Eric, laughing.

She looked gravely at him. Then she gave her head a quick decided little shake.

"I do not think so," she wrote. "I do not know much of the world, but I do not think there are many people like you in it."

One evening, when the far-away hills and fields were scarfed in gauzy purples, and the intervales

were brimming with golden mists, Eric carried to the old orchard a little limp, worn volume that held

a love story. It was the first thing of the kind he had ever read to her, for in the first novel he had lent her the love interest had been very slight and subordinate. This was a beautiful, passionate idyl

exquisitely told.

He read it to her, lying in the grass at her feet; she listened with her hands clasped over her knee and

her eyes cast down. It was not a long story; and when he had finished it he shut the book and looked

up at her questioningly.

"Do you like it, Kilmeny?" he asked.

Very slowly she took her slate and wrote,

"Yes, I like it. But it hurt me, too. I did not know that a person could like anything that hurt her. I do not know why it hurt me. I felt as if I had lost something that I never had. That was a very silly

feeling, was it not? But I did not understand the book very well, you see. It is about love and I do not

know anything about love. Mother told me once that love is a curse, and that I must pray that it

would never enter into my life. She said it very earnestly, and so I believed her. But your book

teaches that it is a blessing. It says that it is the most splendid and wonderful thing in life. Which am I to believe?"

Page 32 of 66

"Love—real love—is never a curse, Kilmeny," said Eric gravely. "There is a false love which IS a curse. Perhaps your mother believed it was that which had entered her life and ruined it; and so she

made the mistake. There is nothing in the world—or in heaven either, as I believe—so truly beautiful

and wonderful and blessed as love."

"Have you ever loved?" asked Kilmeny, with the directness of phrasing necessitated by her mode of communication which was sometimes a little terrible. She asked the question simply and without

embarrassment. She knew of no reason why love might not be discussed with Eric as other matters—

music and books and travel—might be.

"No," said Eric—honestly, as he thought, "but every one has an ideal of love whom he hopes to meet some day—'the ideal woman of a young man's dream.' I suppose I have mine, in some sealed, secret

chamber of my heart."

"I suppose your ideal woman would be beautiful, like the woman in your book?"

"Oh, yes, I am sure I could never care for an ugly woman," said Eric, laughing a little as he sat up.

"Our ideals are always beautiful, whether they so translate themselves into realities or not. But the sun is going down. Time does certainly fly in this enchanted orchard. I believe you bewitch the

moments away, Kilmeny. Your namesake of the poem was a somewhat uncanny maid, if I recollect

aright, and thought as little of seven years in elfland as ordinary folk do of half an hour on upper

earth. Some day I shall waken from a supposed hour's lingering here and find myself an old man

with white hair and ragged coat, as in that fairy tale we read the other night. Will you let me give you

this book? I should never commit the sacrilege of reading it in any other place than this. It is an old

book, Kilmeny. A new book, savouring of the shop and market-place, however beautiful it might be,

would not do for you. This was one of my mother's books. She read it and loved it. See—the faded

rose leaves she placed in it one day are there still. I'll write your name in it—that quaint, pretty name of yours which always sounds as if it had been specially invented for you—'Kilmeny of the

Orchard'—and the date of this perfect June day on which we read it together. Then when you look at

it you will always remember me, and the white buds opening on that rosebush beside you, and the

rush and murmur of the wind in the tops of those old spruces."

He held out the book to her, but, to his surprise, she shook her head, with a deeper flush on her face.

"Won't you take the book, Kilmeny? Why not?"

She took her pencil and wrote slowly, unlike her usual quick movement.

"Do not be offended with me. I shall not need anything to make me remember you because I can

never forget you. But I would rather not take the book. I do not want to read it again. It is about love, and there is no use in my learning about love, even if it is all you say. Nobody will ever love me. I

am too ugly."

"You! Ugly!" exclaimed Eric. He was on the point of going off into a peal of laughter at the idea when a glimpse of her half averted face sobered him. On it was a hurt, bitter look, such as he

remembered seeing once before, when he had asked her if she would not like to see the world for

herself.

"Kilmeny," he said in astonishment, "you don't really think yourself ugly, do you?"

She nodded, without looking at him, and then wrote,

"Oh, yes, I know that I am. I have known it for a long time. Mother told me that I was very ugly and that nobody would ever like to look at me. I am sorry. It hurts me much worse to know I am ugly

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than it does to know I cannot speak. I suppose you will think that is very foolish of me, but it is true.

That was why I did not come back to the orchard for such a long time, even after I had got over my

fright. I hated to think that YOU would think me ugly. And that is why I do not want to go out into

the world and meet people. They would look at me as the egg peddler did one day when I went out

with Aunt Janet to his wagon the spring after mother died. He stared at me so. I knew it was because

he thought me so ugly, and I have always hidden when he came ever since."

Eric's lips twitched. In spite of his pity for the real suffering displayed in her eyes, he could not help feeling amused over the absurd idea of this beautiful girl believing herself in all seriousness to be

ugly.

"But, Kilmeny, do you think yourself ugly when you look in a mirror?" he asked smiling.

"I have never looked in a mirror," she wrote. "I never knew there was such a thing until after mother died, and I read about it in a book. Then I asked Aunt Janet and she said mother had broken all the

looking glasses in the house when I was a baby. But I have seen my face reflected in the spoons, and

in a little silver sugar bowl Aunt Janet has. And it IS ugly—very ugly."

Eric's face went down into the grass. For his life he could not help laughing; and for his life he would

not let Kilmeny see him laughing. A certain little whimsical wish took possession of him and he did

not hasten to tell her the truth, as had been his first impulse. Instead, when he dared to look up he

said slowly,

"I don't think you are ugly, Kilmeny."

"Oh, but I am sure you must," she wrote protestingly. "Even Neil does. He tells me I am kind and nice, but one day I asked him if he thought me very ugly, and he looked away and would not speak,

so I knew what he thought about it, too. Do not let us speak of this again. It makes me feel sorry and

spoils everything. I forget it at other times. Let me play you some good-bye music, and do not feel

vexed because I would not take your book. It would only make me unhappy to read it."

"I am not vexed," said Eric, "and I think you will take it some day yet—after I have shown you something I want you to see. Never mind about your looks, Kilmeny. Beauty isn't everything."

"Oh, it is a great deal," she wrote naively. "But you do like me, even though I am so ugly, don't you?

You like me because of my beautiful music, don't you?"

"I like you very much, Kilmeny," answered Eric, laughing a little; but there was in his voice a tender note of which he was unconscious. Kilmeny was aware of it, however, and she picked up her violin

with a pleased smile.

He left her playing there, and all the way through the dim resinous spruce wood her music followed

him like an invisible guardian spirit.

"Kilmeny the Beautiful!" he murmured, "and yet, good heavens, the child thinks she is ugly—she with a face more lovely than ever an artist dreamed of! A girl of eighteen who has never looked in a

mirror! I wonder if there is another such in any civilized country in the world. What could have

possessed her mother to tell her such a falsehood? I wonder if Margaret Gordon could have been

quite sane. It is strange that Neil has never told her the truth. Perhaps he doesn't want her to find

out."

Eric had met Neil Gordon a few evenings before this, at a country dance where Neil had played the

violin for the dancers. Influenced by curiosity he had sought the lad's acquaintance. Neil was friendly

and talkative at first; but at the first hint concerning the Gordons which Eric threw out skilfully his

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face and manner changed. He looked secretive and suspicious, almost sinister. A sullen look crept

into his big black eyes and he drew his bow across the violin strings with a discordant screech, as if

to terminate the conversation. Plainly nothing was to be found out from him about Kilmeny and her

grim guardians.

CHAPTER X. A TROUBLING OF THE WATERS

One evening in late June Mrs. Williamson was sitting by her kitchen window. Her knitting lay

unheeded in her lap, and Timothy, though he nestled ingratiatingly against her foot as he lay on the

rug and purred his loudest, was unregarded. She rested her face on her hand and looked out of the

window, across the distant harbour, with troubled eyes.

"I guess I must speak," she thought wistfully. "I hate to do it. I always did hate meddling. My mother always used to say that ninety-nine times out of a hundred the last state of a meddler and them she

meddled with was worse than the first. But I guess it's my duty. I was Margaret's friend, and it is my

duty to protect her child any way I can. If the Master does go back across there to meet her I must

tell him what I think about it."

Overhead in his room, Eric was walking about whistling. Presently he came downstairs, thinking of

the orchard, and the girl who would be waiting for him there.

As he crossed the little front entry he heard Mrs. Williamson's voice calling to him.

"Mr. Marshall, will you please come here a moment?"

He went out to the kitchen. Mrs. Williamson looked at him deprecatingly. There was a flush on her

faded cheek and her voice trembled.

"Mr. Marshall, I want to ask you a question. Perhaps you will think it isn't any of my business. But it isn't because I want to meddle. No, no. It is only because I think I ought to speak. I have thought it

over for a long time, and it seems to me that I ought to speak. I hope you won't be angry, but even if

you are I must say what I have to say. Are you going back to the old Connors orchard to meet

Kilmeny Gordon?"

For a moment an angry flush burned in Eric's face. It was more Mrs. Williamson's tone than her

words which startled and annoyed him.

"Yes, I am, Mrs. Williamson," he said coldly. "What of it?"

"Then, sir," said Mrs. Williamson with more firmness, "I have got to tell you that I don't think you are doing right. I have been suspecting all along that that was where you went every evening, but I

haven't said a word to any one about it. Even my husband doesn't know. But tell me this, Master. Do

Kilmeny's uncle and aunt know that you are meeting her there?"

"Why," said Eric, in some confusion, "I—I do not know whether they do or not. But Mrs.

Williamson, surely you do not suspect me of meaning any harm or wrong to Kilmeny Gordon?"

"No, I don't, Master. I might think it of some men, but never of you. I don't for a minute think that Page 35 of 66

you would do her or any woman any wilful wrong. But you may do her great harm for all that. I

want you to stop and think about it. I guess you haven't thought. Kilmeny can't know anything about

the world or about men, and she may get to thinking too much of you. That might break her heart,

because you couldn't ever marry a dumb girl like her. So I don't think you ought to be meeting her so

often in this fashion. It isn't right, Master. Don't go to the orchard again."

Without a word Eric turned away, and went upstairs to his room. Mrs. Williamson picked up her

knitting with a sigh.

"That's done, Timothy, and I'm real thankful," she said. "I guess there'll be no need of saying anything more. Mr. Marshall is a fine young man, only a little thoughtless. Now that he's got his eyes

opened I'm sure he'll do what is right. I don't want Margaret's child made unhappy."

Her husband came to the kitchen door and sat down on the steps to enjoy his evening smoke, talking

between whiffs to his wife of Elder Tracy's church row, and Mary Alice Martin's beau, the price Jake

Crosby was giving for eggs, the quantity of hay yielded by the hill meadow, the trouble he was

having with old Molly's calf, and the respective merits of Plymouth Rock and Brahma roosters. Mrs.

Williamson answered at random, and heard not one word in ten.

"What's got the Master, Mother?" inquired old Robert, presently. "I hear him striding up and down in his room 'sif he was caged. Sure you didn't lock him in by mistake?"

"Maybe he's worried over the way Seth Tracy's acting in school," suggested Mrs. Williamson, who did not choose that her gossipy husband should suspect the truth about Eric and Kilmeny Gordon.

"Shucks, he needn't worry a morsel over that. Seth'll quiet down as soon as he finds he can't run the Master. He's a rare good teacher—better'n Mr. West was even, and that's saying something. The

trustees are hoping he'll stay for another term. They're going to ask him at the school meeting to-

morrow, and offer him a raise of supplement."

Upstairs, in his little room under the eaves, Eric Marshall was in the grip of the most intense and

overwhelming emotion he had ever experienced.

Up and down, to and fro, he walked, with set lips and clenched hands. When he was wearied out he

flung himself on a chair by the window and wrestled with the flood of feeling.

Mrs. Williamson's words had torn away the delusive veil with which he had bound his eyes. He was

face to face with the knowledge that he loved Kilmeny Gordon with the love that comes but once,

and is for all time. He wondered how he could have been so long blind to it. He knew that he must

have loved her ever since their first meeting that May evening in the old orchard.

And he knew that he must choose between two alternatives—either he must never go to the orchard

again, or he must go as an avowed lover to woo him a wife.

Worldly prudence, his inheritance from a long line of thrifty, cool-headed ancestors, was strong in

Eric, and he did not yield easily or speedily to the dictates of his passion. All night he struggled

against the new emotions that threatened to sweep away the "common sense" which David Baker

had bade him take with him when he went a-wooing. Would not a marriage with Kilmeny Gordon be

an unwise thing from any standpoint?

Then something stronger and greater and more vital than wisdom or unwisdom rose up in him and

mastered him. Kilmeny, beautiful, dumb Kilmeny was, as he had once involuntarily thought, "the

one maid" for him. Nothing should part them. The mere idea of never seeing her again was so

unbearable that he laughed at himself for having counted it a possible alternative.

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"If I can win Kilmeny's love I shall ask her to be my wife," he said, looking out of the window to the dark, southwestern hill beyond which lay his orchard.

The velvet sky over it was still starry; but the water of the harbour was beginning to grow silvery in

the reflection of the dawn that was breaking in the east.

"Her misfortune will only make her dearer to me. I cannot realize that a month ago I did not know

her. It seems to me that she has been a part of my life for ever. I wonder if she was grieved that I did

not go to the orchard last night—if she waited for me. If she does, she does not know it herself yet. It

will be my sweet task to teach her what love means, and no man has ever had a lovelier, purer,

pupil."

At the annual school meeting, the next afternoon, the trustees asked Eric to take the Lindsay school

for the following year. He consented unhesitatingly.

That evening he went to Mrs. Williamson, as she washed her tea dishes in the kitchen.

"Mrs. Williamson, I am going back to the old Connors orchard to see Kilmeny again to-night."

She looked at him reproachfully.

"Well, Master, I have no more to say. I suppose it wouldn't be of any use if I had. But you know

what I think of it."

"I intend to marry Kilmeny Gordon if I can win her."

An expression of amazement came into the good woman's face. She looked scrutinizingly at the firm

mouth and steady gray eyes for a moment. Then she said in a troubled voice,

"Do you think that is wise, Master? I suppose Kilmeny is pretty; the egg peddler told me she was;

and no doubt she is a good, nice girl. But she wouldn't be a suitable wife for you—a girl that can't

speak."

"That doesn't make any difference to me."

"But what will your people say?"

"I have no 'people' except my father. When he sees Kilmeny he will understand. She is all the world

to me, Mrs. Williamson."

"As long as you believe that there is nothing more to be said," was the quiet answer, "I'd be a little bit afraid if I was you, though. But young people never think of those things."

"My only fear is that she won't care for me," said Eric soberly.

Mrs. Williamson surveyed the handsome, broad-shouldered young man shrewdly.

"I don't think there are many women would say you 'no', Master. I wish you well in your wooing,

though I can't help thinking you're doing a daft-like thing. I hope you won't have any trouble with

Thomas and Janet. They are so different from other folks there is no knowing. But take my advice,

Master, and go and see them about it right off. Don't go on meeting Kilmeny unbeknownst to them."

"I shall certainly take your advice," said Eric, gravely. "I should have gone to them before. It was merely thoughtlessness on my part. Possibly they do know already. Kilmeny may have told them."

Page 37 of 66

Mrs. Williamson shook her head decidedly.

"No, no, Master, she hasn't. They'd never have let her go on meeting you there if they had known. I

know them too well to think of that for a moment. Go you straight to them and say to them just what

you have said to me. That is your best plan, Master. And take care of Neil. People say he has a

notion of Kilmeny himself. He'll do you a bad turn if he can, I've no doubt. Them foreigners can't be

trusted—and he's just as much a foreigner as his parents before him—though he HAS been brought

up on oatmeal and the shorter catechism, as the old saying has it. I feel that somehow—I always feel

it when I look at him singing in the choir."

"Oh, I am not afraid of Neil," said Eric carelessly. "He couldn't help loving Kilmeny—nobody could."

"I suppose every young man thinks that about his girl—if he's the right sort of young man," said Mrs.

Williamson with a little sigh.

She watched Eric out of sight anxiously.

"I hope it'll all come out right," she thought. "I hope he ain't making an awful mistake—but—I'm afraid. Kilmeny must be very pretty to have bewitched him so. Well, I suppose there is no use in my

worrying over it. But I do wish he had never gone back to that old orchard and seen her."

CHAPTER XI. A LOVER AND HIS LASS

Kilmeny was in the orchard when Eric reached it, and he lingered for a moment in the shadow of the

spruce wood to dream over her beauty.

The orchard had lately overflowed in waves of old-fashioned caraway, and she was standing in the

midst of its sea of bloom, with the lace-like blossoms swaying around her in the wind. She wore the

simple dress of pale blue print in which he had first seen her; silk attire could not better have become

her loveliness. She had woven herself a chaplet of half open white rosebuds and placed it on her dark

hair, where the delicate blossoms seemed less wonderful than her face.

When Eric stepped through the gap she ran to meet him with outstretched hands, smiling. He took

her hands and looked into her eyes with an expression before which hers for the first time faltered.

She looked down, and a warm blush strained the ivory curves of her cheek and throat. His heart

bounded, for in that blush he recognized the banner of love's vanguard.

"Are you glad to see me, Kilmeny?" he asked, in a low significant tone.

She nodded, and wrote in a somewhat embarrassed fashion,

"Yes. Why do you ask? You know I am always glad to see you. I was afraid you would not come.

You did not come last night and I was so sorry. Nothing in the orchard seemed nice any longer. I

couldn't even play. I tried to, and my violin only cried. I waited until it was dark and then I went

home."

"I am sorry you were disappointed, Kilmeny. I couldn't come last night. Some day I shall tell you

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why. I stayed home to learn a new lesson. I am sorry you missed me—no, I am glad. Can you

understand how a person may be glad and sorry for the same thing?"

She nodded again, with a return of her usual sweet composure.

"Yes, I could not have understood once, but I can now. Did you learn your new lesson?"

"Yes, very thoroughly. It was a delightful lesson when I once understood it. I must try to teach it to you some day. Come over to the old bench, Kilmeny. There is something I want to say to you. But

first, will you give me a rose?"

She ran to the bush, and, after careful deliberation, selected a perfect half-open bud and brought it to

him—a white bud with a faint, sunrise flush about its golden heart.

"Thank you. It is as beautiful as—as a woman I know," Eric said.

A wistful look came into her face at his words, and she walked with a drooping head across the

orchard to the bench.

"Kilmeny," he said, seriously, "I am going to ask you to do something for me. I want you to take me home with you and introduce me to your uncle and aunt."

She lifted her head and stared at him incredulously, as if he had asked her to do something wildly

impossible. Understanding from his grave face that he meant what he said, a look of dismay dawned

in her eyes. She shook her head almost violently and seemed to be making a passionate, instinctive

effort to speak. Then she caught up her pencil and wrote with feverish haste:

"I cannot do that. Do not ask me to. You do not understand. They would be very angry. They do not

want to see any one coming to the house. And they would never let me come here again. Oh, you do

not mean it?"

He pitied her for the pain and bewilderment in her eyes; but he took her slender hands in his and said

firmly,

"Yes, Kilmeny, I do mean it. It is not quite right for us to be meeting each other here as we have

been doing, without the knowledge and consent of your friends. You cannot now understand this,

but—believe me—it is so."

She looked questioningly, pityingly into his eyes. What she read there seemed to convince her, for

she turned very pale and an expression of hopelessness came into her face. Releasing her hands, she

wrote slowly,

"If you say it is wrong I must believe it. I did not know anything so pleasant could be wrong. But if it is wrong we must not meet here any more. Mother told me I must never do anything that was wrong.

But I did not know this was wrong."

"It was not wrong for you, Kilmeny. But it was a little wrong for me, because I knew better—or

rather, should have known better. I didn't stop to think, as the children say. Some day you will

understand fully. Now, you will take me to your uncle and aunt, and after I have said to them what I

want to say it will be all right for us to meet here or anywhere."

She shook her head.

"No," she wrote, "Uncle Thomas and Aunt Janet will tell you to go away and never come back. And Page 39 of 66

they will never let me come here any more. Since it is not right to meet you I will not come, but it is

no use to think of going to them. I did not tell them about you because I knew that they would forbid

me to see you, but I am sorry, since it is so wrong."

"You must take me to them," said Eric firmly. "I am quite sure that things will not be as you fear when they hear what I have to say."

Uncomforted, she wrote forlornly,

"I must do it, since you insist, but I am sure it will be no use. I cannot take you to-night because they are away. They went to the store at Radnor. But I will take you to-morrow night; and after that I shall

not see you any more."

Two great tears brimmed over in her big blue eyes and splashed down on her slate. Her lips quivered

like a hurt child's. Eric put his arm impulsively about her and drew her head down upon his shoulder.

As she cried there, softly, miserably, he pressed his lips to the silky black hair with its coronal of

rosebuds. He did not see two burning eyes which were looking at him over the old fence behind him

with hatred and mad passion blazing in their depths. Neil Gordon was crouched there, with clenched

hands and heaving breast, watching them.

"Kilmeny, dear, don't cry," said Eric tenderly. "You shall see me again. I promise you that, whatever happens. I do not think your uncle and aunt will be as unreasonable as you fear, but even if they are

they shall not prevent me from meeting you somehow."

Kilmeny lifted her head, and wiped the tears from her eyes.

"You do not know what they are like," she wrote. "They will lock me into my room. That is the way they always punished me when I was a little girl. And once, not so very long ago, when I was a big

girl, they did it."

"If they do I'll get you out somehow," said Eric, laughing a little.

She allowed herself to smile, but it was a rather forlorn little effort. She did not cry any more, but her spirits did not come back to her. Eric talked gaily, but she only listened in a pensive, absent way, as

if she scarcely heard him. When he asked her to play she shook her head.

"I cannot think any music to-night," she wrote, "I must go home, for my head aches and I feel very stupid."

"Very well, Kilmeny. Now, don't worry, little girl. It will all come out all right."

Evidently she did not share his confidence, for her head drooped again as they walked together

across the orchard. At the entrance of the wild cherry lane she paused and looked at him half

reproachfully, her eyes filling again. She seemed to be bidding him a mute farewell. With an impulse

of tenderness which he could not control, Eric put his arm about her and kissed her red, trembling

mouth. She started back with a little cry. A burning colour swept over her face, and the next moment

she fled swiftly up the darkening lane.

The sweetness of that involuntary kiss clung to Eric's lips as he went homeward, half-intoxicating

him. He knew that it had opened the gates of womanhood to Kilmeny. Never again, he felt, would

her eyes meet his with their old unclouded frankness. When next he looked into them he knew that

he should see there the consciousness of his kiss. Behind her in the orchard that night Kilmeny had

left her childhood.

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CHAPTER XII. A PRISONER OF LOVE

When Eric betook himself to the orchard the next evening he had to admit that he felt rather nervous.

He did not know how the Gordons would receive him and certainly the reports he had heard of them

were not encouraging, to say the least of it. Even Mrs. Williamson, when he had told her where he

was going, seemed to look upon him as one bent on bearding a lion in his den.

"I do hope they won't be very uncivil to you, Master," was the best she could say.

He expected Kilmeny to be in the orchard before him, for he had been delayed by a call from one of

the trustees; but she was nowhere to be seen. He walked across it to the wild cherry lane; but at its

entrance he stopped short in sudden dismay.

Neil Gordon had stepped from behind the trees and stood confronting him, with blazing eyes, and

lips which writhed in emotion so great that at first it prevented him from speaking.

With a thrill of dismay Eric instantly understood what must have taken place. Neil had discovered

that he and Kilmeny had been meeting in the orchard, and beyond doubt had carried that tale to Janet

and Thomas Gordon. He realized how unfortunate it was that this should have happened before he

had had time to make his own explanation. It would probably prejudice Kilmeny's guardians still

further against him. At this point in his thoughts Neil's pent up passion suddenly found vent in a

burst of wild words.

"So you've come to meet her again. But she isn't here—you'll never see her again! I hate you—I hate

you—I hate you!"

His voice rose to a shrill scream. He took a furious step nearer Eric as if he would attack him. Eric

looked steadily in his eyes with a calm defiance, before which his wild passion broke like foam on a

rock.

"So you have been making trouble for Kilmeny, Neil, have you?" said Eric contemptuously. "I suppose you have been playing the spy. And I suppose that you have told her uncle and aunt that she

has been meeting me here. Well, you have saved me the trouble of doing it, that is all. I was going to

tell them myself, tonight. I don't know what your motive in doing this has been. Was it jealousy of

me? Or have you done it out of malice to Kilmeny?"

His contempt cowed Neil more effectually than any display of anger could have done.

"Never you mind why I did it," he muttered sullenly. "What I did or why I did it is no business of yours. And you have no business to come sneaking around here either. Kilmeny won't meet you here

again."

"She will meet me in her own home then," said Eric sternly. "Neil, in behaving as you have done you have shown yourself to be a very foolish, undisciplined boy. I am going straightway to Kilmeny's

uncle and aunt to explain everything."

Neil sprang forward in his path.

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"No—no—go away," he implored wildly. "Oh, sir—oh, Mr. Marshall, please go away. I'll do

anything for you if you will. I love Kilmeny. I've loved her all my life. I'd give my life for her. I can't have you coming here to steal her from me. If you do—I'll kill you! I wanted to kill you last night

when I saw you kiss her. Oh, yes, I saw you. I was watching—spying, if you like. I don't care what

you call it. I had followed her—I suspected something. She was so different—so changed. She never

would wear the flowers I picked for her any more. She seemed to forget I was there. I knew

something had come between us. And it was you, curse you! Oh, I'll make you sorry for it."

He was working himself up into a fury again—the untamed fury of the Italian peasant thwarted in his

heart's desire. It overrode all the restraint of his training and environment. Eric, amid all his anger

and annoyance, felt a thrill of pity for him. Neil Gordon was only a boy still; and he was miserable

and beside himself.

"Neil, listen to me," he said quietly. "You are talking very foolishly. It is not for you to say who shall or shall not be Kilmeny's friend. Now, you may just as well control yourself and go home like a

decent fellow. I am not at all frightened by your threats, and I shall know how to deal with you if you

persist in interfering with me or persecuting Kilmeny. I am not the sort of person to put up with that,

my lad."

The restrained power in his tone and look cowed Neil. The latter turned sullenly away, with another

muttered curse, and plunged into the shadow of the firs.

Eric, not a little ruffled under all his external composure by this most unexpected and unpleasant

encounter, pursued his way along the lane which wound on by the belt of woodland in twist and

curve to the Gordon homestead. His heart beat as he thought of Kilmeny. What might she not be

suffering? Doubtless Neil had given a very exaggerated and distorted account of what he had seen,

and probably her dour relations were very angry with her, poor child. Anxious to avert their wrath as

soon as might be, he hurried on, almost forgetting his meeting with Neil. The threats of the latter did

not trouble him at all. He thought the angry outburst of a jealous boy mattered but little. What did

matter was that Kilmeny was in trouble which his heedlessness had brought upon her.

Presently he found himself before the Gordon house. It was an old building with sharp eaves and

dormer windows, its shingles stained a dark gray by long exposure to wind and weather. Faded green

shutters hung on the windows of the lower story. Behind it grew a thick wood of spruces. The little

yard in front of it was grassy and prim and flowerless; but over the low front door a luxuriant early-

flowering rose vine clambered, in a riot of blood-red blossom which contrasted strangely with the

general bareness of its surroundings. It seemed to fling itself over the grim old house as if intent on

bombarding it with an alien life and joyousness.

Eric knocked at the door, wondering if it might be possible that Kilmeny should come to it. But a

moment later it was opened by an elderly woman—a woman of rigid lines from the hem of her lank,

dark print dress to the crown of her head, covered with black hair which, despite its few gray threads,

was still thick and luxuriant. She had a long, pale face somewhat worn and wrinkled, but possessing

a certain harsh comeliness of feature which neither age nor wrinkles had quite destroyed; and her

deep-set, light gray eyes were not devoid of suggested kindliness, although they now surveyed Eric

with an unconcealed hostility. Her figure, in its merciless dress, was very angular; yet there was

about her a dignity of carriage and manner which Eric liked. In any case, he preferred her unsmiling

dourness to vulgar garrulity.

He lifted his hat.

"Have I the honour of speaking to Miss Gordon?" he asked.

"I am Janet Gordon," said the woman stiffly.

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"Then I wish to talk with you and your brother."

"Come in."

She stepped aside and motioned him to a low brown door opening on the right.

"Go in and sit down. I'll call Thomas," she said coldly, as she walked out through the hall.

Eric walked into the parlour and sat down as bidden. He found himself in the most old-fashioned

room he had ever seen. The solidly made chairs and tables, of some wood grown dark and polished

with age, made even Mrs. Williamson's "parlour set" of horsehair seem extravagantly modern by

contrast. The painted floor was covered with round braided rugs. On the centre table was a lamp, a

Bible and some theological volumes contemporary with the square-runged furniture. The walls,

wainscoted half way up in wood and covered for the rest with a dark, diamond-patterned paper, were

hung with faded engravings, mostly of clerical-looking, bewigged personages in gowns and bands.

But over the high, undecorated black mantel-piece, in a ruddy glow of sunset light striking through

the window, hung one which caught and held Eric's attention to the exclusion of everything else. It

was the enlarged "crayon" photograph of a young girl, and, in spite of the crudity of execution, it was easily the center of interest in the room.

Eric at once guessed that this must be the picture of Margaret Gordon, for, although quite unlike

Kilmeny's sensitive, spirited face in general, there was a subtle, unmistakable resemblance about

brow and chin.

The pictured face was a very handsome one, suggestive of velvety dark eyes and vivid colouring; but

it was its expression rather than its beauty which fascinated Eric. Never had he seen a countenance

indicative of more intense and stubborn will power. Margaret Gordon was dead and buried; the

picture was a cheap and inartistic production in an impossible frame of gilt and plush; yet the vitality

in that face dominated its surroundings still. What then must have been the power of such a

personality in life?

Eric realized that this woman could and would have done whatsoever she willed, unflinchingly and

unrelentingly. She could stamp her desire on everything and everybody about her, moulding them to

her wish and will, in their own despite and in defiance of all the resistance they might make. Many

things in Kilmeny's upbringing and temperament became clear to him.

"If that woman had told me I was ugly I should have believed her," he thought. "Ay, even though I had a mirror to contradict her. I should never have dreamed of disputing or questioning anything she

might have said. The strange power in her face is almost uncanny, peering out as it does from a mask

of beauty and youthful curves. Pride and stubbornness are its salient characteristics. Well, Kilmeny

does not at all resemble her mother in expression and only very slightly in feature."

His reflections were interrupted by the entrance of Thomas and Janet Gordon. The former had

evidently been called from his work. He nodded without speaking, and the two sat gravely down

before Eric.

"I have come to see you with regard to your niece, Mr. Gordon," he said abruptly, realizing that there would be small use in beating about the bush with this grim pair. "I met your—I met Neil Gordon in

the Connors orchard, and I found that he has told you that I have been meeting Kilmeny there."

He paused. Thomas Gordon nodded again; but he did not speak, and he did not remove his steady,

piercing eyes from the young man's flushed countenance. Janet still sat in a sort of expectant

immovability.

Page 43 of 66

"I fear that you have formed an unfavourable opinion of me on this account, Mr. Gordon," Eric went on. "But I hardly think I deserve it. I can explain the matter if you will allow me. I met your niece accidentally in the orchard three weeks ago and heard her play. I thought her music very wonderful

and I fell into the habit of coming to the orchard in the evenings to hear it. I had no thought of

harming her in any way, Mr. Gordon. I thought of her as a mere child, and a child who was doubly

sacred because of her affliction. But recently I—I—it occurred to me that I was not behaving quite

honourably in encouraging her to meet me thus. Yesterday evening I asked her to bring me here and

introduce me to you and her aunt. We would have come then if you had been at home. As you were

not we arranged to come tonight."

"I hope you will not refuse me the privilege of seeing your niece, Mr. Gordon," said Eric eagerly. "I ask you to allow me to visit her here. But I do not ask you to receive me as a friend on my own

recommendations only. I will give you references—men of standing in Charlottetown and

Queenslea. If you refer to them—"

"I don't need to do that," said Thomas Gordon, quietly. "I know more of you than you think, Master.

I know your father well by reputation and I have seen him. I know you are a rich man's son,

whatever your whim in teaching a country school may be. Since you have kept your own counsel

about your affairs I supposed you didn't want your true position generally known, and so I have held

my tongue about you. I know no ill of you, Master, and I think none, now that I believe you were not

beguiling Kilmeny to meet you unknown to her friends of set purpose. But all this doesn't make you

a suitable friend for her, sir—it makes you all the more unsuitable. The less she sees of you the

better."

Eric almost started to his feet in an indignant protest; but he swiftly remembered that his only hope

of winning Kilmeny lay in bringing Thomas Gordon to another way of thinking. He had got on better

than he had expected so far; he must not now jeopardize what he had gained by rashness or

impatience.

"Why do you think so, Mr. Gordon?" he asked, regaining his self-control with an effort.

"Well, plain speaking is best, Master. If you were to come here and see Kilmeny often she'd most

likely come to think too much of you. I mistrust there's some mischief done in that direction already.

Then when you went away she might break her heart—for she is one of those who feel things

deeply. She has been happy enough. I know folks condemn us for the way she has been brought up,

but they don't know everything. It was the best way for her, all things considered. And we don't want

her made unhappy, Master."

"But I love your niece and I want to marry her if I can win her love," said Eric steadily.

He surprised them out of their self possession at last. Both started, and looked at him as if they could

not believe the evidence of their ears.

"Marry her! Marry Kilmeny!" exclaimed Thomas Gordon incredulously. "You can't mean it, sir.

Why, she is dumb—Kilmeny is dumb."

"That makes no difference in my love for her, although I deeply regret it for her own sake,"

answered Eric. "I can only repeat what I have already said, Mr. Gordon. I want Kilmeny for my

wife."

The older man leaned forward and looked at the floor in a troubled fashion, drawing his bushy

eyebrows down and tapping the calloused tips of his fingers together uneasily. He was evidently

puzzled by this unexpected turn of the conversation, and in grave doubt what to say.

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"What would your father say to all this, Master?" he queried at last.

"I have often heard my father say that a man must marry to please himself," said Eric, with a smile.

"If he felt tempted to go back on that opinion I think the sight of Kilmeny would convert him. But,

after all, it is what I say that matters in this case, isn't it, Mr. Gordon? I am well educated and not

afraid of work. I can make a home for Kilmeny in a few years even if I have to depend entirely on

my own resources. Only give me the chance to win her—that is all I ask."

"I don't think it would do, Master," said Thomas Gordon, shaking his head. "Of course, I dare say you—you"—he tried to say "love," but Scotch reserve balked stubbornly at the terrible word—"you think you like Kilmeny now, but you are only a lad—and lads' fancies change."

"Mine will not," Eric broke in vehemently. "It is not a fancy, Mr. Gordon. It is the love that comes once in a lifetime and once only. I may be but a lad, but I know that Kilmeny is the one woman in

the world for me. There can never be any other. Oh, I'm not speaking rashly or inconsiderately. I

have weighed the matter well and looked at it from every aspect. And it all comes to this—I love

Kilmeny and I want what any decent man who loves a woman truly has the right to have—the

chance to win her love in return."

"Well!" Thomas Gordon drew a long breath that was almost a sigh. "Maybe—if you feel like that, Master—I don't know—there are some things it isn't right to cross. Perhaps we oughtn't—Janet,

woman, what shall we say to him?"

Janet Gordon had hitherto spoken no word. She had sat rigidly upright on one of the old chairs under

Margaret Gordon's insistent picture, with her knotted, toil-worn hands grasping the carved arms

tightly, and her eyes fastened on Eric's face. At first their expression had been guarded and hostile,

but as the conversation proceeded they lost this gradually and became almost kindly. Now, when her

brother appealed to her, she leaned forward and said eagerly,

"Do you know that there is a stain on Kilmeny's birth, Master?"

"I know that her mother was the innocent victim of a very sad mistake, Miss Gordon. I admit no real

stain where there was no conscious wrong doing. Though, for that matter, even if there were, it

would be no fault of Kilmeny's and would make no difference to me as far as she is concerned."

A sudden change swept over Janet Gordon's face, quite marvelous in the transformation it wrought.

Her grim mouth softened and a flood of repressed tenderness glorified her cold gray eyes.

"Well, then." she said almost triumphantly, "since neither that nor her dumbness seems to be any drawback in your eyes I don't see why you should not have the chance you want. Perhaps your world

will say she is not good enough for you, but she is—she is"—this half defiantly. "She is a sweet and innocent and true-hearted lassie. She is bright and clever and she is not ill looking. Thomas, I say let

the young man have his will."

Thomas Gordon stood up, as if he considered the responsibility off his shoulders and the interview at

an end.

"Very well, Janet, woman, since you think it is wise. And may God deal with him as he deals with

her. Good evening, Master. I'll see you again, and you are free to come and go as suits you. But I

must go to my work now. I left my horses standing in the field."

"I will go up and send Kilmeny down," said Janet quietly.

She lighted the lamp on the table and left the room. A few minutes later Kilmeny came down. Eric

Page 45 of 66

rose and went to meet her eagerly, but she only put out her right hand with a pretty dignity and,

while she looked into his face, she did not look into his eyes.

"You see I was right after all, Kilmeny," he said, smiling. "Your uncle and aunt haven't driven me away. On the contrary they have been very kind to me, and they say I may see you whenever and

wherever I like."

She smiled, and went over to the table to write on her slate.

"But they were very angry last night, and said dreadful things to me. I felt very frightened and

unhappy. They seemed to think I had done something terribly wrong. Uncle Thomas said he would

never trust me out of his sight again. I could hardly believe it when Aunt Janet came up and told me

you were here and that I might come down. She looked at me very strangely as she spoke, but I

could see that all the anger had gone out of her face. She seemed pleased and yet sad. But I am glad

they have forgiven us."

She did not tell him how glad she was, and how unhappy she had been over the thought that she was

never to see him again. Yesterday she would have told him all frankly and fully; but for her

yesterday was a lifetime away—a lifetime in which she had come into her heritage of womanly

dignity and reserve. The kiss which Eric had left on her lips, the words her uncle and aunt had said to

her, the tears she had shed for the first time on a sleepless pillow—all had conspired to reveal her to

herself. She did not yet dream that she loved Eric Marshall, or that he loved her. But she was no

longer the child to be made a dear comrade of. She was, though quite unconsciously, the woman to

be wooed and won, exacting, with sweet, innate pride, her dues of allegiance.

CHAPTER XIII. A SWEETER WOMAN NE'ER DREW

BREATH

Thenceforward Eric Marshall was a constant visitor at the Gordon homestead. He soon became a

favourite with Thomas and Janet, especially the latter. He liked them both, discovering under all

their outward peculiarities sterling worth and fitness of character. Thomas Gordon was surprisingly

well read and could floor Eric any time in argument, once he became sufficiently warmed up to

attain fluency of words. Eric hardly recognized him the first time he saw him thus animated. His bent

form straightened, his sunken eyes flashed, his face flushed, his voice rang like a trumpet, and he

poured out a flood of eloquence which swept Eric's smart, up-to-date arguments away like straws in

the rush of a mountain torrent. Eric enjoyed his own defeat enormously, but Thomas Gordon was

ashamed of being thus drawn out of himself, and for a week afterwards confined his remarks to

"Yes" and "No," or, at the outside, to a brief statement that a change in the weather was brewing.

Janet never talked on matters of church and state; such she plainly considered to be far beyond a

woman's province. But she listened with lurking interest in her eyes while Thomas and Eric pelted

on each other with facts and statistics and opinions, and on the rare occasions when Eric scored a

point she permitted herself a sly little smile at her brother's expense.

Of Neil, Eric saw but little. The Italian boy avoided him, or if they chanced to meet passed him by

with sullen, downcast eyes. Eric did not trouble himself greatly about Neil; but Thomas Gordon,

understanding the motive which had led Neil to betray his discovery of the orchard trysts, bluntly

told Kilmeny that she must not make such an equal of Neil as she had done.

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"You have been too kind to the lad, lassie, and he's got presumptuous. He must be taught his place. I mistrust we have all made more of him than we should."

But most of the idyllic hours of Eric's wooing were spent in the old orchard; the garden end of it was

now a wilderness of roses—roses red as the heart of a sunset, roses pink as the early flush of dawn,

roses white as the snows on mountain peaks, roses full blown, and roses in buds that were sweeter

than anything on earth except Kilmeny's face. Their petals fell in silken heaps along the old paths or

clung to the lush grasses among which Eric lay and dreamed, while Kilmeny played to him on her

violin.

Eric promised himself that when she was his wife her wonderful gift for music should be cultivated

to the utmost. Her powers of expression seemed to deepen and develop every day, growing as her

soul grew, taking on new colour and richness from her ripening heart.

To Eric, the days were all pages in an inspired idyl. He had never dreamed that love could be so

mighty or the world so beautiful. He wondered if the universe were big enough to hold his joy or

eternity long enough to live it out. His whole existence was, for the time being, bounded by that

orchard where he wooed his sweetheart. All other ambitions and plans and hopes were set aside in

the pursuit of this one aim, the attainment of which would enhance all others a thousand-fold, the

loss of which would rob all others of their reason for existence. His own world seemed very far away

and the things of that world forgotten.

His father, on hearing that he had taken the Lindsay school for a year, had written him a testy,

amazed letter, asking him if he were demented.

"Or is there a girl in the case?" he wrote. "There must be, to tie you down to a place like Lindsay for a year. Take care, master Eric; you've been too sensible all your life. A man is bound to make a fool

of himself at least once, and when you didn't get through with that in your teens it may be attacking

you now."

David also wrote, expostulating more gravely; but he did not express the suspicions Eric knew he

must entertain.

"Good old David! He is quaking with fear that I am up to something he can't approve of, but he won't say a word by way of attempting to force my confidence."

It could not long remain a secret in Lindsay that "the Master" was going to the Gordon place on courting thoughts intent. Mrs. Williamson kept her own and Eric's counsel; the Gordons said

nothing; but the secret leaked out and great was the surprise and gossip and wonder. One or two

incautious people ventured to express their opinion of the Master's wisdom to the Master himself;

but they never repeated the experiment. Curiosity was rife. A hundred stories were circulated about

Kilmeny, all greatly exaggerated in the circulation. Wise heads were shaken and the majority opined

that it was a great pity. The Master was a likely young fellow; he could have his pick of almost

anybody, you might think; it was too bad that he should go and take up with that queer, dumb niece

of the Gordons who had been brought up in such a heathenish way. But then you never could guess

what way a man's fancy would jump when he set out to pick him a wife. They guessed Neil Gordon

didn't like it much. He seemed to have got dreadful moody and sulky of late and wouldn't sing in the

choir any more. Thus the buzz of comment and gossip ran.

To those two in the old orchard it mattered not a whit. Kilmeny knew nothing of gossip. To her,

Lindsay was as much of an unknown world as the city of Eric's home. Her thoughts strayed far and

wide in the realm of her fancy, but they never wandered out to the little realities that hedged her

strange life around. In that life she had blossomed out, a fair, unique thing. There were times when

Eric almost regretted that one day he must take her out of her white solitude to a world that, in the

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last analysis, was only Lindsay on a larger scale, with just the same pettiness of thought and feeling

and opinion at the bottom of it. He wished he might keep her to himself for ever, in that old, spruce-

hidden orchard where the roses fell.

One day he indulged himself in the fulfillment of the whim he had formed when Kilmeny had told

him she thought herself ugly. He went to Janet and asked her permission to bring a mirror to the

house that he might have the privilege of being the first to reveal Kilmeny to herself exteriorly. Janet

was somewhat dubious at first.

"There hasn't been such a thing in the house for sixteen years, Master. There never was but three—

one in the spare room, and a little one in the kitchen, and Margaret's own. She broke them all the day

it first struck her that Kilmeny was going to be bonny. I might have got one after she died maybe.

But I didn't think of it; and there's no need of lasses to be always prinking at their looking glasses."

But Eric pleaded and argued skilfully, and finally Janet said,

"Well, well, have your own way. You'd have it anyway I think, lad. You are one of those men who

always get their own way. But that is different from the men who TAKE their own way—and that's a

mercy," she added under her breath.

Eric went to town the next Saturday and picked out a mirror that pleased him. He had it shipped to

Radnor and Thomas Gordon brought it home, not knowing what it was, for Janet had thought it just

as well he should not know.

"It's a present the Master is making Kilmeny," she told him.

She sent Kilmeny off to the orchard after tea, and Eric slipped around to the house by way of the

main road and lane. He and Janet together unpacked the mirror and hung it on the parlour wall.

"I never saw such a big one, Master," said Janet rather doubtfully, as if, after all, she distrusted its gleaming, pearly depth and richly ornamented frame. "I hope it won't make her vain. She is very

bonny, but it may not do her any good to know it."

"It won't harm her," said Eric confidently. "When a belief in her ugliness hasn't spoiled a girl a belief in her beauty won't."

But Janet did not understand epigrams. She carefully removed a little dust from the polished surface,

and frowned meditatively at the by no means beautiful reflection she saw therein.

"I cannot think what made Kilmeny suppose she was ugly, Master."

"Her mother told her she was," said Eric, rather bitterly.

"Ah!" Janet shot a quick glance at the picture of her sister. "Was that it? Margaret was a strange woman, Master. I suppose she thought her own beauty had been a snare to her. She WAS bonny.

That picture doesn't do her justice. I never liked it. It was taken before she was—before she met

Ronald Fraser. We none of us thought it very like her at the time. But, Master, three years later it was

like her—oh, it was like her then! That very look came in her face."

"Kilmeny doesn't resemble her mother," remarked Eric, glancing at the picture with the same feeling of mingled fascination and distaste with which he always regarded it. "Does she look like her

father?"

"No, not a great deal, though some of her ways are very like his. She looks like her grandmother—

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Margaret's mother, Master. Her name was Kilmeny too, and she was a handsome, sweet woman. I

was very fond of my stepmother, Master. When she died she gave her baby to me, and asked me to

be a mother to it. Ah well, I tried; but I couldn't fence the sorrow out of Margaret's life, and it

sometimes comes to my mind that maybe I'll not be able to fence it out of Kilmeny's either."

"That will be my task," said Eric.

"You'll do your best, I do not doubt. But maybe it will be through you that sorrow will come to her

after all."

"Not through any fault of mine, Aunt Janet."

"No, no, I'm not saying it will be your fault. But my heart misgives me at times. Oh, I dare say I am only a foolish old woman, Master. Go your ways and bring your lass here to look at your plaything

when you like. I'll not make or meddle with it."

Janet betook herself to the kitchen and Eric went to look for Kilmeny. She was not in the orchard and

it was not until he had searched for some time that he found her. She was standing under a beech tree

in a field beyond the orchard, leaning on the longer fence, with her hands clasped against her cheek.

In them she held a white Mary-lily from the orchard. She did not run to meet him while he was

crossing the pasture, as she would once have done. She waited motionless until he was close to her.

Eric began, half laughingly, half tenderly, to quote some lines from her namesake ballad:

" ' Ki l meny, Ki l meny, wher e have you been?

Long hae we sought bai t h hol t and den, —

By l i nn, by f or d, and gr eenwood t r ee!

Yet you ar e hal esome and f ai r t o see.

Wher e got you t hat j oup o' t he l i l y sheen?

That bonny snood o' t he bi r k sae gr een,

And t hose r oses, t he f ai r est t hat ever was seen?

Ki l meny, Ki l meny, wher e have you been?'

"Only it's a lily and not a rose you are carrying. I might go on and quote the next couplet too—

" ' Ki l meny l ooked up wi t h a l ovel y gr ace,

But t her e was nae smi l e on Ki l meny' s f ace. '

"Why are you looking so sober?"

Kilmeny did not have her slate with her and could not answer; but Eric guessed from something in

her eyes that she was bitterly contrasting the beauty of the ballad's heroine with her own supposed

ugliness.

"Come down to the house, Kilmeny. I have something there to show you—something lovelier than

you have ever seen before," he said, with boyish pleasure shining in his eyes. "I want you to go and put on that muslin dress you wore last Sunday evening, and pin up your hair the same way you did

then. Run along—don't wait for me. But you are not to go into the parlour until I come. I want to

pick some of those Mary-lilies up in the orchard."

When Eric returned to the house with an armful of the long stemmed, white Madonna lilies that

bloomed in the orchard Kilmeny was just coming down the steep, narrow staircase with its striped

carpeting of homespun drugget. Her marvelous loveliness was brought out into brilliant relief by the

dark wood work and shadows of the dim old hall.

She wore a trailing, clinging dress of some creamy tinted fabric that had been her mother's. It had not

been altered in any respect, for fashion held no sway at the Gordon homestead, and Kilmeny thought

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that the dress left nothing to be desired. Its quaint style suited her admirably; the neck was slightly

cut away to show the round white throat, and the sleeves were long, full "bishops," out of which her beautiful, slender hands slipped like flowers from their sheaths. She had crossed her long braids at

the back and pinned them about her head like a coronet; a late white rose was fastened low down on

the left side.

" ' A man had gi ven al l ot her bl i ss

And al l hi s wor l dl y weal t h f or t hi s—

To wast e hi s whol e hear t i n one ki ss

Upon her per f ect l i ps, ' "

quoted Eric in a whisper as he watched her descend. Aloud he said,

"Take these lilies on your arm, letting their bloom fall against your shoulder—so. Now, give me your hand and shut your eyes. Don't open them until I say you may."

He led her into the parlour and up to the mirror.

"Look," he cried, gaily.

Kilmeny opened her eyes and looked straight into the mirror where, like a lovely picture in a golden

frame, she saw herself reflected. For a moment she was bewildered. Then she realized what it meant.

The lilies fell from her arm to the floor and she turned pale. With a little low, involuntary cry she put her hands over her face.

Eric pulled them boyishly away.

"Kilmeny, do you think you are ugly now? This is a truer mirror than Aunt Janet's silver sugar bowl!

Look—look—look! Did you ever imagine anything fairer than yourself, dainty Kilmeny?"

She was blushing now, and stealing shy radiant glances at the mirror. With a smile she took her slate

and wrote naively,

"I think I am pleasant to look upon. I cannot tell you how glad I am. It is so dreadful to believe one is ugly. You can get used to everything else, but you never get used to that. It hurts just the same every

time you remember it. But why did mother tell me I was ugly? Could she really have thought so?

Perhaps I have become better looking since I grew up."

"I think perhaps your mother had found that beauty is not always a blessing, Kilmeny, and thought it wiser not to let you know you possessed it. Come, let us go back to the orchard now. We mustn't

waste this rare evening in the house. There is going to be a sunset that we shall remember all our

lives. The mirror will hang here. It is yours. Don't look into it too often, though, or Aunt Janet will

disapprove. She is afraid it will make you vain."

Kilmeny gave one of her rare, musical laughs, which Eric never heard without a recurrence of the old

wonder that she could laugh so when she could not speak. She blew an airy little kiss at her mirrored

face and turned from it, smiling happily.

On their way to the orchard they met Neil. He went by them with an averted face, but Kilmeny

shivered and involuntarily drew nearer to Eric.

"I don't understand Neil at all now," she wrote nervously. "He is not nice, as he used to be, and sometimes he will not answer when I speak to him. And he looks so strangely at me, too. Besides, he

is surly and impertinent to Uncle and Aunt."

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"Don't mind Neil," said Eric lightly. "He is probably sulky because of some things I said to him when I found he had spied on us."

That night before she went up stairs Kilmeny stole into the parlour for another glimpse of herself in

that wonderful mirror by the light of a dim little candle she carried. She was still lingering there

dreamily when Aunt Janet's grim face appeared in the shadows of the doorway.

"Are you thinking about your own good looks, lassie? Ay, but remember that handsome is as

handsome does," she said, with grudging admiration—for the girl with her flushed cheeks and

shining eyes was something that even dour Janet Gordon could not look upon unmoved.

Kilmeny smiled softly.

"I'll try to remember," she wrote, "but oh, Aunt Janet, I am so glad I am not ugly. It is not wrong to be glad of that, is it?"

The older woman's face softened.

"No, I don't suppose it is, lassie," she conceded. "A comely face is something to be thankful for—as none know better than those who have never possessed it. I remember well when I was a girl—but

that is neither here nor there. The Master thinks you are wonderful bonny, Kilmeny," she added,

looking keenly at the girl.

Kilmeny started and a scarlet blush scorched her face. That, and the expression that flashed into her

eyes, told Janet Gordon all she wished to know. With a stifled sigh she bade her niece good night

and went away.

Kilmeny ran fleetly up the stairs to her dim little room, that looked out into the spruces, and flung

herself on her bed, burying her burning face in the pillow. Her aunt's words had revealed to her the

hidden secret of her heart. She knew that she loved Eric Marshall—and the knowledge brought with

it a strange anguish. For was she not dumb? All night she lay staring wide-eyed through the darkness

till the dawn.

CHAPTER XIV. IN HER SELFLESS MOOD

Eric noticed a change in Kilmeny at their next meeting—a change that troubled him. She seemed

aloof, abstracted, almost ill at ease. When he proposed an excursion to the orchard he thought she

was reluctant to go. The days that followed convinced him of the change. Something had come

between them. Kilmeny seemed as far away from him as if she had in truth, like her namesake of the

ballad, sojourned for seven years in the land "where the rain never fell and the wind never blew," and had come back washed clean from all the affections of earth.

Eric had a bad week of it; but he determined to put an end to it by plain speaking. One evening in the

orchard he told her of his love.

It was an evening in August, with wheat fields ripening to their harvestry—a soft violet night made

for love, with the distant murmur of an unquiet sea on a rocky shore sounding through it. Kilmeny

was sitting on the old bench where he had first seen her. She had been playing for him, but her music

did not please her and she laid aside the violin with a little frown.

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It might be that she was afraid to play—afraid that her new emotions might escape her and reveal

themselves in music. It was difficult to prevent this, so long had she been accustomed to pour out all

her feelings in harmony. The necessity for restraint irked her and made of her bow a clumsy thing

which no longer obeyed her wishes. More than ever at that instant did she long for speech—speech

that would conceal and protect where dangerous silence might betray.

In a low voice that trembled with earnestness Eric told her that he loved her—that he had loved her

from the first time he had seen her in that old orchard. He spoke humbly but not fearfully, for he

believed that she loved him, and he had little expectation of any rebuff.

"Kilmeny, will you be my wife?" he asked finally, taking her hands in his.

Kilmeny had listened with averted face. At first she had blushed painfully but now she had grown

very pale. When he had finished speaking and was waiting for her answer, she suddenly pulled her

hands away, and, putting them over her face, burst into tears and noiseless sobs.

"Kilmeny, dearest, have I alarmed you? Surely you knew before that I loved you. Don't you care for

me?" Eric said, putting his arm about her and trying to draw her to him. But she shook her head

sorrowfully, and wrote with compressed lips,

"Yes, I do love you, but I will never marry you, because I cannot speak."

"Oh, Kilmeny," said Eric smiling, for he believed his victory won, "that doesn't make any difference to me—you know it doesn't, sweetest. If you love me that is enough."

But Kilmeny only shook her head again. There was a very determined look on her pale face. She

wrote,

"No, it is not enough. It would be doing you a great wrong to marry you when I cannot speak, and I

will not do it because I love you too much to do anything that would harm you. Your world would

think you had done a very foolish thing and it would be right. I have thought it all over many times

since something Aunt Janet said made me understand, and I know I am doing right. I am sorry I did

not understand sooner, before you had learned to care so much."

"Kilmeny, darling, you have taken a very absurd fancy into that dear black head of yours. Don't you

know that you will make me miserably unhappy all my life if you will not be my wife?"

"No, you think so now; and I know you will feel very badly for a time. Then you will go away and

after awhile you will forget me; and then you will see that I was right. I shall be very unhappy, too,

but that is better than spoiling your life. Do not plead or coax because I shall not change my mind."

Eric did plead and coax, however—at first patiently and smilingly, as one might argue with a dear

foolish child; then with vehement and distracted earnestness, as he began to realize that Kilmeny

meant what she said. It was all in vain. Kilmeny grew paler and paler, and her eyes revealed how

keenly she was suffering. She did not even try to argue with him, but only listened patiently and

sadly, and shook her head. Say what he would, entreat and implore as he might, he could not move

her resolution a hairs-breadth.

Yet he did not despair; he could not believe that she would adhere to such a resolution; he felt sure

that her love for him would eventually conquer, and he went home not unhappily after all. He did not

understand that it was the very intensity of her love which gave her the strength to resist his

pleading, where a more shallow affection might have yielded. It held her back unflinchingly from

doing him what she believed to be a wrong.

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CHAPTER XV. AN OLD, UNHAPPY, FAR-OFF THING

The next day Eric sought Kilmeny again and renewed his pleadings, but again in vain. Nothing he

could say, no argument which he could advance, was of any avail against her sad determination.

When he was finally compelled to realize that her resolution was not to be shaken, he went in his

despair to Janet Gordon. Janet listened to his story with concern and disappointment plainly visible

on her face. When he had finished she shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Master. I can't tell you how sorry I am. I had hoped for something very different.

HOPED! I have PRAYED for it. Thomas and I are getting old and it has weighed on my mind for

years—what was to become of Kilmeny when we would be gone. Since you came I had hoped she

would have a protector in you. But if Kilmeny says she will not marry you I am afraid she'll stick to

it."

"But she loves me," cried the young man, "and if you and her uncle speak to her—urge her—perhaps you can influence her—"

"No, Master, it wouldn't be any use. Oh, we will, of course, but it will not be any use. Kilmeny is as determined as her mother when once she makes up her mind. She has always been good and

obedient for the most part, but once or twice we have found out that there is no moving her if she

does resolve upon anything. When her mother died Thomas and I wanted to take her to church. We

could not prevail on her to go. We did not know why then, but now I suppose it was because she

believed she was so very ugly. It is because she thinks so much of you that she will not marry you.

She is afraid you would come to repent having married a dumb girl. Maybe she is right—maybe she

is right."

"I cannot give her up," said Eric stubbornly. "Something must be done. Perhaps her defect can be remedied even yet. Have you ever thought of that? You have never had her examined by a doctor

qualified to pronounce on her case, have you?"

"No, Master, we never took her to anyone. When we first began to fear that she was never going to

talk Thomas wanted to take her to Charlottetown and have her looked to. He thought so much of the

child and he felt terrible about it. But her mother wouldn't hear of it being done. There was no use

trying to argue with her. She said that it would be no use—that it was her sin that was visited on her

child and it could never be taken away."

"And did you give in meekly to a morbid whim like that?" asked Eric impatiently.

"Master, you didn't know my sister. We HAD to give in—nobody could hold out against her. She

was a strange woman—and a terrible woman in many ways—after her trouble. We were afraid to

cross her for fear she would go out of her mind."

"But, could you not have taken Kilmeny to a doctor unknown to her mother?"

"No, that was not possible. Margaret never let her out of her sight, not even when she was grown up.

Besides, to tell you the whole truth, Master, we didn't think ourselves that it would be much use to

try to cure Kilmeny. It WAS a sin that made her as she is."

"Aunt Janet, how can you talk such nonsense? Where was there any sin? Your sister thought herself

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a lawful wife. If Ronald Fraser thought otherwise—and there is no proof that he did—HE committed

a sin, but you surely do not believe that it was visited in this fashion on his innocent child!"

"No, I am not meaning that, Master. That wasn't where Margaret did wrong; and though I never liked

Ronald Fraser over much, I must say this in his defence—I believe he thought himself a free man

when he married Margaret. No, it's something else—something far worse. It gives me a shiver

whenever I think of it. Oh, Master, the Good Book is right when it says the sins of the parents are

visited on the children. There isn't a truer word in it than that from cover to cover."

"What, in heaven's name, is the meaning of all this?" exclaimed Eric. "Tell me what it is. I must know the whole truth about Kilmeny. Do not torment me."

"I am going to tell you the story, Master, though it will be like opening an old wound. No living

person knows it but Thomas and me. When you hear it you will understand why Kilmeny can't

speak, and why it isn't likely that there can ever be anything done for her. She doesn't know the truth

and you must never tell her. It isn't a fit story for her ears, especially when it is about her mother.

Promise me that you will never tell her, no matter what may happen."

"I promise. Go on—go on," said the young man feverishly.

Janet Gordon locked her hands together in her lap, like a woman who nerves herself to some hateful

task. She looked very old; the lines on her face seemed doubly deep and harsh.

"My sister Margaret was a very proud, high-spirited girl, Master. But I would not have you think she was unlovable. No, no, that would be doing a great injustice to her memory. She had her faults as we

all have; but she was bright and merry and warm-hearted. We all loved her. She was the light and life

of this house. Yes, Master, before the trouble that came on her Margaret was a winsome lass, singing

like a lark from morning till night. Maybe we spoiled her a little—maybe we gave her too much of

her own way.

"Well, Master, you have heard the story of her marriage to Ronald Fraser and what came after, so I

need not go into that. I know, or used to know Elizabeth Williamson well, and I know that whatever

she told you would be the truth and nothing more or less than the truth.

"Our father was a very proud man. Oh, Master, if Margaret was too proud she got it from no

stranger. And her misfortune cut him to the heart. He never spoke a word to us here for more than

three days after he heard of it. He sat in the corner there with bowed head and would not touch bite

or sup. He had not been very willing for her to marry Ronald Fraser; and when she came home in

disgrace she had not set foot over the threshold before he broke out railing at her. Oh, I can see her

there at the door this very minute, Master, pale and trembling, clinging to Thomas's arm, her great

eyes changing from sorrow and shame to wrath. It was just at sunset and a red ray came in at the

window and fell right across her breast like a stain of blood.

"Father called her a hard name, Master. Oh, he was too hard—even though he was my father I must

say he was too hard on her, broken-hearted as she was, and guilty of nothing more after all than a

little willfulness in the matter of her marriage.

"And father was sorry for it—Oh, Master, the word wasn't out of his mouth before he was sorry for

it. But the mischief was done. Oh, I'll never forget Margaret's face, Master! It haunts me yet in the

black of the night. It was full of anger and rebellion and defiance. But she never answered him back.

She clenched her hands and went up to her old room without saying a word, all those mad feelings

surging in her soul, and being held back from speech by her sheer, stubborn will. And, Master, never

a word did Margaret say from that day until after Kilmeny was born—not one word, Master. Nothing

we could do for her softened her. And we were kind to her, Master, and gentle with her, and never

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reproached her by so much as a look. But she would not speak to anyone. She just sat in her room

most of the time and stared at the wall with such awful eyes. Father implored her to speak and

forgive him, but she never gave any sign that she heard him.

"I haven't come to the worst yet, Master. Father sickened and took to his bed. Margaret would not go in to see him. Then one night Thomas and I were watching by him; it was about eleven o'clock. All

at once he said,

"'Janet, go up and tell the lass'—he always called Margaret that—it was a kind of pet name he had

for her—'that I'm deein' and ask her to come down and speak to me afore I'm gone.'

"Master, I went. Margaret was sitting in her room all alone in the cold and dark, staring at the wall. I told her what our father had said. She never let on she heard me. I pleaded and wept, Master. I did

what I had never done to any human creature—I kneeled to her and begged her, as she hoped for

mercy herself, to come down and see our dying father. Master, she wouldn't! She never moved or

looked at me. I had to get up and go downstairs and tell that old man she would not come."

Janet Gordon lifted her hands and struck them together in her agony of remembrance.

"When I told father he only said, oh, so gently,

"'Poor lass, I was too hard on her. She isna to blame. But I canna go to meet her mother till our little lass has forgie'n me for the name I called her. Thomas, help me up. Since she winna come to me I

must e'en go to her.'

"There was no crossing him—we saw that. He got up from his deathbed and Thomas helped him out

into the hall and up the stair. I walked behind with the candle. Oh, Master, I'll never forget it—the

awful shadows and the storm wind wailing outside, and father's gasping breath. But we got him to

Margaret's room and he stood before her, trembling, with his white hairs falling about his sunken

face. And he prayed Margaret to forgive him—to forgive him and speak just one word to him before

he went to meet her mother. Master"—Janet's voice rose almost to a shriek—"she would not—she

would not! And yet she WANTED to speak—afterwards she confessed to me that she wanted to

speak. But her stubbornness wouldn't let her. It was like some evil power that had gripped hold of

her and wouldn't let go. Father might as well have pleaded with a graven image. Oh, it was hard and

dreadful! She saw her father die and she never spoke the word he prayed for to him. THAT was her

sin, Master,—and for that sin the curse fell on her unborn child. When father understood that she

would not speak he closed his eyes and was like to have fallen if Thomas had not caught him.

"'Oh, lass, you're a hard woman,' was all he said. And they were his last words. Thomas and I carried him back to his room, but the breath was gone from him before we ever got him there.

"Well, Master, Kilmeny was born a month afterwards, and when Margaret felt her baby at her breast

the evil thing that had held her soul in its bondage lost its power. She spoke and wept and was

herself again. Oh, how she wept! She implored us to forgive her and we did freely and fully. But the

one against whom she had sinned most grievously was gone, and no word of forgiveness could come

to her from the grave. My poor sister never knew peace of conscience again, Master. But she was

gentle and kind and humble until—until she began to fear that Kilmeny was never going to speak.

We thought then that she would go out of her mind. Indeed, Master, she never was quite right again.

"But that is the story and it's a thankful woman I am that the telling of it is done. Kilmeny can't speak because her mother wouldn't."

Eric had listened with a gray horror on his face to the gruesome tale. The black tragedy of it appalled

him—the tragedy of that merciless law, the most cruel and mysterious thing in God's universe, which

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ordains that the sin of the guilty shall be visited on the innocent. Fight against it as he would, the

miserable conviction stole into his heart that Kilmeny's case was indeed beyond the reach of any

human skill.

"It is a dreadful tale," he said moodily, getting up and walking restlessly to and fro in the dim spruce-shadowed old kitchen where they were. "And if it is true that her mother's willful silence caused

Kilmeny's dumbness, I fear, as you say, that we cannot help her. But you may be mistaken. It may

have been nothing more than a strange coincidence. Possibly something may be done for her. At all

events, we must try. I have a friend in Queenslea who is a physician. His name is David Baker, and

he is a very skilful specialist in regard to the throat and voice. I shall have him come here and see

Kilmeny."

"Have your way," assented Janet in the hopeless tone which she might have used in giving him

permission to attempt any impossible thing.

"It will be necessary to tell Dr. Baker why Kilmeny cannot speak—or why you think she cannot."

Janet's face twitched.

"Must that be, Master? Oh, it's a bitter tale to tell a stranger."

"Don't be afraid. I shall tell him nothing that is not strictly necessary to his proper understanding of the case. It will be quite enough to say that Kilmeny may be dumb because for several months before

her birth her mother's mind was in a very morbid condition, and she preserved a stubborn and

unbroken silence because of a certain bitter personal resentment."

"Well, do as you think best, Master."

Janet plainly had no faith in the possibility of anything being done for Kilmeny. But a rosy glow of

hope flashed over Kilmeny's face when Eric told her what he meant to do.

"Oh, do you think he can make me speak?" she wrote eagerly.

"I don't know, Kilmeny. I hope that he can, and I know he will do all that mortal skill can do. If he can remove your defect will you promise to marry me, dearest?"

She nodded. The grave little motion had the solemnity of a sacred promise.

"Yes," she wrote, "when I can speak like other women I will marry you."

CHAPTER XVI. DAVID BAKER'S OPINION

The next week David Baker came to Lindsay. He arrived in the afternoon when Eric was in school.

When the latter came home he found that David had, in the space of an hour, captured Mrs.

Williamson's heart, wormed himself into the good graces of Timothy, and become hail-fellow-well-

met with old Robert. But he looked curiously at Eric when the two young men found themselves

alone in the upstairs room.

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"Now, Eric, I want to know what all this is about. What scrape have you got into? You write me a

letter, entreating me in the name of friendship to come to you at once. Accordingly I come post

haste. You seem to be in excellent health yourself. Explain why you have inveigled me hither."

"I want you to do me a service which only you can do, David," said Eric quietly. "I didn't care to go into the details by letter. I have met in Lindsay a young girl whom I have learned to love. I have

asked her to marry me, but, although she cares for me, she refuses to do so because she is dumb. I

wish you to examine her and find out the cause of her defect, and if it can be cured. She can hear

perfectly and all her other faculties are entirely normal. In order that you may better understand the

case I must tell you the main facts of her history."

This Eric proceeded to do. David Baker listened with grave attention, his eyes fastened on his

friend's face. He did not betray the surprise and dismay he felt at learning that Eric had fallen in love with a dumb girl of doubtful antecedents; and the strange case enlisted his professional interest.

When he had heard the whole story he thrust his hands into his pockets and strode up and down the

room several times in silence. Finally he halted before Eric.

"So you have done what I foreboded all along you would do—left your common sense behind you

when you went courting."

"If I did," said Eric quietly, "I took with me something better and nobler than common sense."

David shrugged his shoulders.

"You'll have hard work to convince me of that, Eric."

"No, it will not be difficult at all. I have one argument that will convince you speedily—and that is Kilmeny Gordon herself. But we will not discuss the matter of my wisdom or lack of it just now.

What I want to know is this—what do you think of the case as I have stated it to you?"

David frowned thoughtfully.

"I hardly know what to think. It is very curious and unusual, but it is not totally unprecedented.

There have been cases on record where pre-natal influences have produced a like result. I cannot just

now remember whether any were ever cured. Well, I'll see if anything can be done for this girl. I

cannot express any further opinion until I have examined her."

The next morning Eric took David up to the Gordon homestead. As they approached the old orchard

a strain of music came floating through the resinous morning arcades of the spruce wood—a wild,

sorrowful, appealing cry, full of indescribable pathos, yet marvelously sweet.

"What is that?" exclaimed David, starting.

"That is Kilmeny playing on her violin," answered Eric. "She has great talent in that respect and improvises wonderful melodies."

When they reached the orchard Kilmeny rose from the old bench to meet them, her lovely luminous

eyes distended, her face flushed with the excitement of mingled hope and fear.

"Oh, ye gods!" muttered David helplessly.

He could not hide his amazement and Eric smiled to see it. The latter had not failed to perceive that

his friend had until now considered him as little better than a lunatic.

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"Kilmeny, this is my friend, Dr. Baker," he said.

Kilmeny held out her hand with a smile. Her beauty, as she stood there in the fresh morning sunshine

beside a clump of her sister lilies, was something to take away a man's breath. David, who was by no

means lacking in confidence and generally had a ready tongue where women were concerned, found

himself as mute and awkward as a school boy, as he bowed over her hand.

But Kilmeny was charmingly at ease. There was not a trace of embarrassment in her manner, though

there was a pretty shyness. Eric smiled as he recalled HIS first meeting with her. He suddenly

realized how far Kilmeny had come since then and how much she had developed.

With a little gesture of invitation Kilmeny led the way through the orchard to the wild cherry lane,

and the two men followed.

"Eric, she is simply unutterable!" said David in an undertone. "Last night, to tell you the truth, I had a rather poor opinion of your sanity. But now I am consumed with a fierce envy. She is the loveliest

creature I ever saw."

Eric introduced David to the Gordons and then hurried away to his school. On his way down the

Gordon lane he met Neil and was half startled by the glare of hatred in the Italian boy's eyes. Pity

succeeded the momentary alarm. Neil's face had grown thin and haggard; his eyes were sunken and

feverishly bright; he looked years older than on the day when Eric had first seen him in the brook

hollow.

Prompted by sudden compassionate impulse Eric stopped and held out his hand.

"Neil, can't we be friends?" he said. "I am sorry if I have been the cause of inflicting pain on you."

"Friends! Never!" said Neil passionately. "You have taken Kilmeny from me. I shall hate you always. And I'll be even with you yet."

He strode fiercely up the lane, and Eric, with a shrug of his shoulders, went on his way, dismissing

the meeting from his mind.

The day seemed interminably long to him. David had not returned when he went home to dinner; but

when he went to his room in the evening he found his friend there, staring out of the window.

"Well," he said, impatiently, as David wheeled around but still kept silence, "What have you to say to me? Don't keep me in suspense any longer, David. I have endured all I can. To-day has seemed

like a thousand years. Have you discovered what is the matter with Kilmeny?"

"There is nothing the matter with her," answered David slowly, flinging himself into a chair by the window.

"What do you mean?"

"Just exactly what I say. Her vocal organs are all perfect. As far as they are concerned, there is

absolutely no reason why she should not speak."

"Then why can't she speak? Do you think—do you think—"

"I think that I cannot express my conclusion in any better words than Janet Gordon used when she

said that Kilmeny cannot speak because her mother wouldn't. That is all there is to it. The trouble is

psychological, not physical. Medical skill is helpless before it. There are greater men than I in my

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profession; but it is my honest belief, Eric, that if you were to consult them they would tell you just

what I have told you, neither more nor less."

"Then there is no hope," said Eric in a tone of despair. "You can do nothing for her?"

David took from the back of his chair a crochet antimacassar with a lion rampant in the center and

spread it over his knee.

"I can do nothing for her," he said, scowling at that work of art. "I do not believe any living man can do anything for her. But I do not say—exactly—that there is no hope."

"Come, David, I am in no mood for guessing riddles. Speak plainly, man, and don't torment me."

David frowned dubiously and poked his finger through the hole which represented the eye of the

king of beasts.

"I don't know that I can make it plain to you. It isn't very plain to myself. And it is only a vague theory of mine, of course. I cannot substantiate it by any facts. In short, Eric, I think it is possible

that Kilmeny may speak sometime—if she ever wants it badly enough."

"Wants to! Why, man, she wants to as badly as it is possible for any one to want anything. She loves me with all her heart and she won't marry me because she can't speak. Don't you suppose that a girl

under such circumstances would 'want' to speak as much as any one could?"

"Yes, but I do not mean that sort of wanting, no matter how strong the wish may be. What I do mean

is—a sudden, vehement, passionate inrush of desire, physical, psychical, mental, all in one, mighty

enough to rend asunder the invisible fetters that hold her speech in bondage. If any occasion should

arise to evoke such a desire I believe that Kilmeny would speak—and having once spoken would

thenceforth be normal in that respect—ay, if she spoke but the one word."

"All this sounds like great nonsense to me," said Eric restlessly. "I suppose you have an idea what you are talking about, but I haven't. And, in any case, it practically means that there is no hope for

her—or me. Even if your theory is correct it is not likely such an occasion as you speak of will ever

arise. And Kilmeny will never marry me."

"Don't give up so easily, old fellow. There HAVE been cases on record where women have changed

their minds."

"Not women like Kilmeny," said Eric miserably. "I tell you she has all her mother's unfaltering will and tenacity of purpose, although she is free from any taint of pride or selfishness. I thank you for

your sympathy and interest, David. You have done all you could—but, heavens, what it would have

meant to me if you could have helped her!"

With a groan Eric flung himself on a chair and buried his face in his hands. It was a moment which

held for him all the bitterness of death. He had thought that he was prepared for disappointment; he

had not known how strong his hope had really been until that hope was utterly taken from him.

David, with a sigh, returned the crochet antimacassar carefully to its place on the chair back.

"Eric, last night, to be honest, I thought that, if I found I could not help this girl, it would be the best thing that could happen, as far as you were concerned. But since I have seen her—well, I would give

my right hand if I could do anything for her. She is the wife for you, if we could make her speak;

yes, and by the memory of your mother"—David brought his fist down on the window sill with a

force that shook the casement,—"she is the wife for you, speech or no speech, if we could only

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convince her of it."

"She cannot be convinced of that. No, David, I have lost her. Did you tell her what you have told

me?"

"I told her I could not help her. I did not say anything to her of my theory—that would have done no good."

"How did she take it?"

"Very bravely and quietly—'like a winsome lady'. But the look in her eyes—Eric, I felt as if I had

murdered something. She bade me good-bye with a pitiful smile and went upstairs. I did not see her

again, although I stayed to dinner as her uncle's request. Those old Gordons are a queer pair. I liked

them, though. They are strong and staunch—good friends, bitter enemies. They were sorry that I

could not help Kilmeny, but I saw plainly that old Thomas Gordon thought that I had been meddling

with predestination in attempting it."

Eric smiled mechanically.

"I must go up and see Kilmeny. You'll excuse me, won't you, David? My books are there—help

yourself."

But when Eric reached the Gordon house he saw only old Janet, who told him that Kilmeny was in

her room and refused to see him.

"She thought you would come up, and she left this with me to give you, Master."

Janet handed him a little note. It was very brief and blotted with tears.

"Do not come any more, Eric," it ran. "I must not see you, because it would only make it harder for us both. You must go away and forget me. You will be thankful for this some day. I shall always

love and pray for you."

" KI LMENY. "

"I MUST see her," said Eric desperately. "Aunt Janet, be my friend. Tell her she must see me for a little while at least."

Janet shook her head but went upstairs. She soon returned.

"She says she cannot come down. You know she means it, Master, and it is of no use to coax her.

And I must say I think she is right. Since she will not marry you it is better for her not to see you."

Eric was compelled to go home with no better comfort than this. In the morning, as it was Sunday,

he drove David Baker to the station. He had not slept and he looked so miserable and reckless that

David felt anxious about him. David would have stayed in Lindsay for a few days, but a certain

critical case in Queenslea demanded his speedy return. He shook hands with Eric on the station

platform.

"Eric, give up that school and come home at once. You can do no good in Lindsay now, and you'll

only eat your heart out here."

"I must see Kilmeny once more before I leave," was all Eric's answer.

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That afternoon he went again to the Gordon homestead. But the result was the same; Kilmeny

refused to see him, and Thomas Gordon said gravely,

"Master, you know I like you and I am sorry Kilmeny thinks as she does, though maybe she is right.

I would be glad to see you often for your own sake and I'll miss you much; but as things are I tell

you plainly you'd better not come here any more. It will do no good, and the sooner you and she get

over thinking about each other the better for you both. Go now, lad, and God bless you."

"Do you know what it is you are asking of me?" said Eric hoarsely.

"I know I am asking a hard thing for your own good, Master. It is not as if Kilmeny would ever

change her mind. We have had some experience with a woman's will ere this. Tush, Janet, woman,

don't be weeping. You women are foolish creatures. Do you think tears can wash such things away?

No, they cannot blot out sin, or the consequences of sin. It's awful how one sin can spread out and

broaden, till it eats into innocent lives, sometimes long after the sinner has gone to his own

accounting. Master, if you take my advice, you'll give up the Lindsay school and go back to your

own world as soon as may be."

CHAPTER XVII. A BROKEN FETTER

Eric went home with a white, haggard face. He had never thought it was possible for a man to suffer

as he suffered then. What was he to do? It seemed impossible to go on with life—there was NO life

apart from Kilmeny. Anguish wrung his soul until his strength went from him and youth and hope

turned to gall and bitterness in his heart.

He never afterwards could tell how he lived through the following Sunday or how he taught school

as usual on Monday. He found out how much a man may suffer and yet go on living and working.

His body seemed to him an automaton that moved and spoke mechanically, while his tortured spirit,

pent-up within, endured pain that left its impress on him for ever. Out of that fiery furnace of agony

Eric Marshall was to go forth a man who had put boyhood behind him for ever and looked out on life

with eyes that saw into it and beyond.

On Tuesday afternoon there was a funeral in the district and, according to custom, the school was

closed. Eric went again to the old orchard. He had no expectation of seeing Kilmeny there, for he

thought she would avoid the spot lest she might meet him. But he could not keep away from it,

although the thought of it was an added torment, and he vibrated between a wild wish that he might

never see it again, and a sick wonder how he could possibly go away and leave it—that strange old

orchard where he had met and wooed his sweetheart, watching her develop and blossom under his

eyes, like some rare flower, until in the space of three short months she had passed from exquisite

childhood into still more exquisite womanhood.

As he crossed the pasture field before the spruce wood he came upon Neil Gordon, building a longer

fence. Neil did not look up as Eric passed, but sullenly went on driving poles. Before this Eric had

pitied Neil; now he was conscious of feeling sympathy with him. Had Neil suffered as he was

suffering? Eric had entered into a new fellowship whereof the passport was pain.

The orchard was very silent and dreamy in the thick, deep tinted sunshine of the September

afternoon, a sunshine which seemed to possess the power of extracting the very essence of all the

odours which summer has stored up in wood and field. There were few flowers now; most of the

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lilies, which had queened it so bravely along the central path a few days before, were withered. The

grass had become ragged and sere and unkempt. But in the corners the torches of the goldenrod were

kindling and a few misty purple asters nodded here and there. The orchard kept its own strange

attractiveness, as some women with youth long passed still preserve an atmosphere of remembered

beauty and innate, indestructible charm.

Eric walked drearily and carelessly about it, and finally sat down on a half fallen fence panel in the

shadow of the overhanging spruce boughs. There he gave himself up to a reverie, poignant and bitter

sweet, in which he lived over again everything that had passed in the orchard since his first meeting

there with Kilmeny.

So deep was his abstraction that he was conscious of nothing around him. He did not hear stealthy

footsteps behind him in the dim spruce wood. He did not even see Kilmeny as she came slowly

around the curve of the wild cherry lane.

Kilmeny had sought the old orchard for the healing of her heartbreak, if healing were possible for

her. She had no fear of encountering Eric there at that time of day, for she did not know that it was

the district custom to close the school for a funeral. She would never have gone to it in the evening,

but she longed for it continually; it, and her memories, were all that was left her now.

Years seemed to have passed over the girl in those few days. She had drunk of pain and broken bread

with sorrow. Her face was pale and strained, with bluish, transparent shadows under her large wistful

eyes, out of which the dream and laughter of girlhood had gone, but into which had come the potent

charm of grief and patience. Thomas Gordon had shaken his head bodingly when he had looked at

her that morning at the breakfast table.

"She won't stand it," he thought. "She isn't long for this world. Maybe it is all for the best, poor lass.

But I wish that young Master had never set foot in the Connors orchard, or in this house. Margaret,

Margaret, it's hard that your child should have to be paying the reckoning of a sin that was sinned

before her birth."

Kilmeny walked through the lane slowly and absently like a woman in a dream. When she came to

the gap in the fence where the lane ran into the orchard she lifted her wan, drooping face and saw

Eric, sitting in the shadow of the wood at the other side of the orchard with his bowed head in his

hands. She stopped quickly and the blood rushed wildly over her face.

The next moment it ebbed, leaving her white as marble. Horror filled her eyes,—blank, deadly

horror, as the livid shadow of a cloud might fill two blue pools.

Behind Eric Neil Gordon was standing tense, crouched, murderous. Even at that distance Kilmeny

saw the look on his face, saw what he held in his hand, and realized in one agonized flash of

comprehension what it meant.

All this photographed itself in her brain in an instant. She knew that by the time she could run across

the orchard to warn Eric by a touch it would be too late. Yet she must warn him—she MUST—she

MUST! A mighty surge of desire seemed to rise up within her and overwhelm her like a wave of the

sea,—a surge that swept everything before it in an irresistible flood. As Neil Gordon swiftly and

vindictively, with the face of a demon, lifted the axe he held in his hand, Kilmeny sprang forward

through the gap.

"ERIC, ERIC, LOOK BEHIND YOU—LOOK BEHIND YOU!"

Eric started up, confused, bewildered, as the voice came shrieking across the orchard. He did not in

the least realize that it was Kilmeny who had called to him, but he instinctively obeyed the

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command.

He wheeled around and saw Neil Gordon, who was looking, not at him, but past him at Kilmeny.

The Italian boy's face was ashen and his eyes were filled with terror and incredulity, as if he had

been checked in his murderous purpose by some supernatural interposition. The axe, lying at his feet

where he had dropped it in his unutterable consternation on hearing Kilmeny's cry told the whole

tale. But before Eric could utter a word Neil turned, with a cry more like that of an animal than a

human being, and fled like a hunted creature into the shadow of the spruce wood.

A moment later Kilmeny, her lovely face dewed with tears and sunned over with smiles, flung

herself on Eric's breast.

"Oh, Eric, I can speak,—I can speak! Oh, it is so wonderful! Eric, I love you—I love you!"

CHAPTER XVIII. NEIL GORDON SOLVES HIS OWN

PROBLEM

"It is a miracle!" said Thomas Gordon in an awed tone.

It was the first time he had spoken since Eric and Kilmeny had rushed in, hand in hand, like two

children intoxicated with joy and wonder, and gasped out their story together to him and Janet.

"Oh, no, it is very wonderful, but it is not a miracle," said Eric. "David told me it might happen. I had no hope that it would. He could explain it all to you if he were here."

Thomas Gordon shook his head. "I doubt if he could, Master—he, or any one else. It is near enough

to a miracle for me. Let us thank God reverently and humbly that he has seen fit to remove his curse

from the innocent. Your doctors may explain it as they like, lad, but I'm thinking they won't get

much nearer to it than that. It is awesome, that is what it is. Janet, woman, I feel as if I were in a

dream. Can Kilmeny really speak?"

"Indeed I can, Uncle," said Kilmeny, with a rapturous glance at Eric. "Oh, I don't know how it came to me—I felt that I MUST speak—and I did. And it is so easy now—it seems to me as if I could

always have done it."

She spoke naturally and easily. The only difficulty which she seemed to experience was in the proper

modulation of her voice. Occasionally she pitched it too high—again, too low. But it was evident

that she would soon acquire perfect control of it. It was a beautiful voice—very clear and soft and

musical.

"Oh, I am so glad that the first word I said was your name, dearest," she murmured to Eric.

"What about Neil?" asked Thomas Gordon gravely, rousing himself with an effort from his

abstraction of wonder. "What are we to do with him when he returns? In one way this is a sad

business."

Eric had almost forgotten about Neil in his overwhelming amazement and joy. The realization of his

escape from sudden and violent death had not yet had any opportunity to take possession of his

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thoughts.

"We must forgive him, Mr. Gordon. I know how I should feel towards a man who took Kilmeny

from me. It was an evil impulse to which he gave way in his suffering—and think of the good which

has resulted from it."

"That is true, Master, but it does not alter the terrible fact that the boy had murder in his heart,—that he would have killed you. An over-ruling Providence has saved him from the actual commission of

the crime and brought good out of evil; but he is guilty in thought and purpose. And we have cared

for him and instructed him as our own—with all his faults we have loved him! It is a hard thing, and

I do not see what we are to do. We cannot act as if nothing had happened. We can never trust him

again."

But Neil Gordon solved the problem himself. When Eric returned that night he found old Robert

Williamson in the pantry regaling himself with a lunch of bread and cheese after a trip to the station.

Timothy sat on the dresser in black velvet state and gravely addressed himself to the disposal of

various tid-bits that came his way.

"Good night, Master. Glad to see you're looking more like yourself. I told the wife it was only a

lover's quarrel most like. She's been worrying about you; but she didn't like to ask you what was the

trouble. She ain't one of them unfortunate folks who can't be happy athout they're everlasting poking

their noses into other people's business. But what kind of a rumpus was kicked up at the Gordon

place, to-night, Master?"

Eric looked amazed. What could Robert Williamson have heard so soon?

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Why, us folks at the station knew there must have been a to-do of some kind when Neil Gordon

went off on the harvest excursion the way he did."

"Neil gone! On the harvest excursion!" exclaimed Eric.

"Yes, sir. You know this was the night the excursion train left. They cross on the boat to-night—

special trip. There was a dozen or so fellows from hereabouts went. We was all standing around

chatting when Lincoln Frame drove up full speed and Neil jumped out of his rig. Just bolted into the

office, got his ticket and out again, and on to the train without a word to any one, and as black

looking as the Old Scratch himself. We was all too surprised to speak till he was gone. Lincoln

couldn't give us much information. He said Neil had rushed up to their place about dark, looking as if

the constable was after him, and offered to sell that black filly of his to Lincoln for sixty dollars if

Lincoln would drive him to the station in time to catch the excursion train. The filly was Neil's own,

and Lincoln had been wanting to buy her but Neil would never hear to it afore. Lincoln jumped at the

chance. Neil had brought the filly with him, and Lincoln hitched right up and took him to the station.

Neil hadn't no luggage of any kind and wouldn't open his mouth the whole way up, Lincoln says. We

concluded him and old Thomas must have had a row. D'ye know anything about it? Or was you so

wrapped up in sweethearting that you didn't hear or see nothing else?"

Eric reflected rapidly. He was greatly relieved to find that Neil had gone. He would never return and

this was best for all concerned. Old Robert must be told a part of the truth at least, since it would

soon become known that Kilmeny could speak.

"There was some trouble at the Gordon place to-night, Mr. Williamson," he said quietly. "Neil Gordon behaved rather badly and frightened Kilmeny terribly,—so terribly that a very surprising

thing has happened. She has found herself able to speak, and can speak perfectly."

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Old Robert laid down the piece of cheese he was conveying to his mouth on the point of a knife and

stared at Eric in blank amazement.

"God bless my soul, Master, what an extraordinary thing!" he ejaculated. "Are you in earnest? Or are you trying to see how much of a fool you can make of the old man?"

"No, Mr. Williamson, I assure you it is no more than the simple truth. Dr. Baker told me that a shock might cure her,—and it has. As for Neil, he has gone, no doubt for good, and I think it well that he

has."

Not caring to discuss the matter further, Eric left the kitchen. But as he mounted the stairs to his

room he heard old Robert muttering, like a man in hopeless bewilderment,

"Well, I never heard anything like this in all my born days—never—never. Timothy, did YOU ever

hear the like? Them Gordons are an unaccountable lot and no mistake. They couldn't act like other

people if they tried. I must wake mother up and tell her about this, or I'll never be able to sleep."

CHAPTER XIX. VICTOR FROM VANQUISHED ISSUES

Now that everything was settled Eric wished to give up teaching and go back to his own place. True,

he had "signed papers" to teach the school for a year; but he knew that the trustees would let him off if he procured a suitable substitute. He resolved to teach until the fall vacation, which came in

October, and then go. Kilmeny had promised that their marriage should take place in the following

spring. Eric had pleaded for an earlier date, but Kilmeny was sweetly resolute, and Thomas and Janet

agreed with her.

"There are so many things that I must learn yet before I shall be ready to be married," Kilmeny had said. "And I want to get accustomed to seeing people. I feel a little frightened yet whenever I see any one I don't know, although I don't think I show it. I am going to church with Uncle and Aunt after

this, and to the Missionary Society meetings. And Uncle Thomas says that he will send me to a

boarding school in town this winter if you think it advisable."

Eric vetoed this promptly. The idea of Kilmeny in a boarding school was something that could not be

thought about without laughter.

"I can't see why she can't learn all she needs to learn after she is married to me, just as well as

before," he grumbled to her uncle and aunt.

"But we want to keep her with us for another winter yet," explained Thomas Gordon patiently. "We are going to miss her terrible when she does go, Master. She has never been away from us for a

day—she is all the brightness there is in our lives. It is very kind of you to say that she can come

home whenever she likes, but there will be a great difference. She will belong to your world and not

to ours. That is for the best—and we wouldn't have it otherwise. But let us keep her as our own for

this one winter yet."

Eric yielded with the best grace he could muster. After all, he reflected, Lindsay was not so far from

Queenslea, and there were such things as boats and trains.

"Have you told your father about all this yet?" asked Janet anxiously.

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No, he had not. But he went home and wrote a full account of his summer to old Mr. Marshall that

night.

Mr. Marshall, Senior, answered the letter in person. A few days later, Eric, coming home from

school, found his father sitting in Mrs. Williamson's prim, fleckless parlour. Nothing was said about

Eric's letter, however, until after tea. When they found themselves alone, Mr. Marshall said abruptly,

"Eric, what about this girl? I hope you haven't gone and made a fool of yourself. It sounds

remarkably like it. A girl that has been dumb all her life—a girl with no right to her father's name—a

country girl brought up in a place like Lindsay! Your wife will have to fill your mother's place,—and

your mother was a pearl among women. Do you think this girl is worthy of it? It isn't possible!

You've been led away by a pretty face and dairy maid freshness. I expected some trouble out of this

freak of yours coming over here to teach school."

"Wait until you see Kilmeny, father," said Eric, smiling.

"Humph! That's just exactly what David Baker said. I went straight to him when I got your letter, for I knew that there was some connection between it and that mysterious visit of his over here,

concerning which I never could drag a word out of him by hook or crook. And all HE said was, 'Wait

until you see Kilmeny Gordon, sir.' Well, I WILL wait till I see her, but I shall look at her with the

eyes of sixty-five, mind you, not the eyes of twenty-four. And if she isn't what your wife ought to be,

sir, you give her up or paddle your own canoe. I shall not aid or abet you in making a fool of yourself

and spoiling your life."

Eric bit his lip, but only said quietly,

"Come with me, father. We will go to see her now."

They went around by way of the main road and the Gordon lane. Kilmeny was not in when they

reached the house.

"She is up in the old orchard, Master," said Janet. "She loves that place so much she spends all her spare time there. She likes to go there to study."

They sat down and talked awhile with Thomas and Janet. When they left, Mr. Marshall said,

"I like those people. If Thomas Gordon had been a man like Robert Williamson I shouldn't have

waited to see your Kilmeny. But they are all right—rugged and grim, but of good stock and pith—

native refinement and strong character. But I must say candidly that I hope your young lady hasn't

got her aunt's mouth."

"Kilmeny's mouth is like a love-song made incarnate in sweet flesh," said Eric enthusiastically.

"Humph!" said Mr. Marshall. "Well," he added more tolerantly, a moment later, "I was a poet, too, for six months in my life when I was courting your mother."

Kilmeny was reading on the bench under the lilac trees when they reached the orchard. She stood up

and came shyly forward to meet them, guessing who the tall, white-haired old gentleman with Eric

must be. As she approached Eric saw with a thrill of exultation that she had never looked lovelier.

She wore a dress of her favourite blue, simply and quaintly made, as all her gowns were, revealing

the perfect lines of her lithe, slender figure. Her glossy black hair was wound about her head in a

braided coronet, against which a spray of wild asters shone like pale purple stars. Her face was

flushed delicately with excitement. She looked like a young princess, crowned with a ruddy splash of

sunlight that fell through the old trees.

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"Father, this is Kilmeny," said Eric proudly.

Kilmeny held out her hand with a shyly murmured greeting. Mr. Marshall took it and held it in his,

looking so steadily and piercingly into her face that even her frank gaze wavered before the intensity

of his keen old eyes. Then he drew her to him and kissed her gravely and gently on her white

forehead.

"My dear," he said, "I am glad and proud that you have consented to be my son's wife—and my very dear and honoured daughter."

Eric turned abruptly away to hide his emotion and on his face was a light as of one who sees a great

glory widening and deepening down the vista of his future.

THE END.