garden; Esmé being absorbed in some one of her few favourite authors, and a dumb companion for the time.

Then the ponies were within call, and one or other of them was sure to be ridden every day. Esmé would ride to Lochandhu to see Florh, or to gather water lilies; Norah and Ishbel must pay a visit at the manse, or go to see a patient some miles off: the latter was a duty which Norah never neglected, and which was a very necessary one. Norah's small skill in medicine was supernatural in its effects as compared with what the ignorant practice of the patient's friends might have been. She heard that a child was ill, and on riding to the bothie where it lay, she found it lying beneath heaps of plaids and blankets, with head and pulse throbbing in fever, the mother and father seated by a huge turf fire lamenting its inevitable death. Norah asked if they had given anything to the child. "Nothing but the drop whisky to keep the sickness from his heart." Whisky was the universal cure-and curse; and though Norah argued, and exemplified the good effects of an opposite treatment with success, yet if another child in the same family fell ill, they tried whisky again; and did not Norah again interpose, no other prescription would be given. The three sisters seldom required medical surveillance for themselves; the healthy life of exercise in the open air which they led in summer, made their eyes bright and their steps elastic all the year round.

When the snows of winter came, their out-door life perforce altered. The hills lay deep in their untrodden snow; and even the roads were dangerous, from their icy slipperiness, to the shaggy ponies in their rough winter coats.

The brown stacks of peat were piled high, and cart loads carried daily to the house from the square (as the farm offices and stables are designated in Scotland); for blazings fires kept up in each and every grate. Books, and work, and the piano occupied stated hours; the former selected from the old library downstairs, with, at rare intervals, a new selection ordered from London, or borrowed from friends: they had no reviews, to enable them to skim a book and to talk of it superficially afterwards. Their reading was literal, and they reviewed the work amongst themselves with individual criticism or discussion; and sometimes when a Review fell later into their hands, it was delightful to see their judgment often there forestalled.

Norah and Ishbel worked usefully as they sat in the drawingroom on wintry days; many warm flannel petticoats and dresses

were made for poor children and old women of the glens. Esmé was no worker, but she helped at the simpler parts of garments, or sat at the piano, discoursing music to the others. as they sat at work. She did not play brilliantly, but after a method of her own, and her pieces were various and desultory in arrangement: airs from the operas and ancient masters, wild Gaelic laments and stirring pibrochs alternating with German marches and valses. Her music-books were untidy with pencilled writing, and astounding to a professional teacher would have appeared the passionate words written beneath the passages expressing pianissimo or fortissimo.

Mrs. Mac Neil had carried on the education of her daughters, with a quiet love and duty, until Esmé reached her eleventh or twelfth year; and then her health began to fail. She wrote to friends in the south, who sent a good Protestant German governess to Glenbenrough; and soon after, resigning her children to the care of their governess, Mrs. Mac Neil gently bade farewell to them, to her husband, and all else so dear to her below, and fled away to the untroubled regions beyond. She had been a devoted, amiable woman, loved and loving in her generation; and though transplanted from a Lowland home to a Highland soil, the people had never felt her to be alien. It was she who built the first proprietary school in that district, and set the example of a cultivated mind and refined habits to many neighbouring homes. Mademoiselle Backhacker remained as governess until Norah had reached her eighteenth year, about two years previously; and then, with longing steps, she retraced her way home again to the beloved Vaterland: the history and language of which she had thoroughly taught to her pupils; as also French, but no other accomplishment. She was a good, simple woman, very indulgent; but her influence had had little part in the formation of her pupils' character. Perhaps her superstition and German idiosyncrasy had been of a slightly dangerous tendency in connection with Esmé's imaginative bias.

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CHAPTER V.

THE BARN BALL.

We'll bring down the track deer,
We'll bring down the black steer;;
The lamb from the bracken,
And doe from the glen;
The salt sea we'll harry;

And bring to our Charlie

The cream from the bothie,

And curd from the pen.-MAC LEAN'S WELCOME.

STRATHSHIELIE, the large substantial mansion-house of Sir Alastair Mac Neil, one of the chieftains of the clan, and first cousin of Mac Neil of Glenbenrough, lay about fifteen miles from the latter place. His rental and estate nearly doubled those of Glenbenrough, and he showed corresponding hospitality. Merry were the Christmas parties at Strathshielie, and extensive the autumn battues; the former held in the good old Highland fashion, the latter so as to delight the English sportsmen. There were two sons and two daughters of Strathshielie; the former both in the army, and in the same fine Highland regiment, but at home on leave just now; the two daughters, Marion and Julia, were lately returned from an English school. The two families were closely intimate, and Sir Alastair and Lady Mac Neil with the young people were expected on a few days' visit to Glenbenrough; they were to arrive on the third day after the party had taken place at Dreumah, and the girls were thinking of plans of amusement for their cousins.

"Do let us have a barn ball on the 30th," cried Ishbel. "It is Esmé's birthday, for one reason, and we might not be at home when the harvest-home takes place: besides, we are much more likely to catch cold later in the season, as we did last year. Marion and Julia have not been at a barn ball for two years, so this one would be news for their next letters to English school friends.”

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Well, you can ask papa," Norah replied.

"And he must ask the gentlemen from Dreumah!" Esmė exclaimed.

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Oh, yes; what fun to see them dance reels!" exclaimed Ishbel; and she flew down the stairs three steps at a time, to Glenbenrough's business room.

A few hours later, a message was sent to the Grieve (an important personage with the laird, as he has charge of the home farm and servants, and also exercises a sort of general surveillance), whose house was at "the square," desiring him to issue invitations to a dance at the barn on the 30th, in honour of Miss Esmé's birthday. Norah wrote notes to Dr. and Mrs. Macconochie, the parish minister and his wife; to Mr. Macpherson of Phee, and a maiden niece of middle age who lived with him; and to the factor, Mr. Campbell-these being all near neighbours-desiring the pleasure of their company at dinner on the 30th. A note was also despatched to Dreumah, with an invitation from Glenbenrough to the three gentlemen, appointing a rendezvous in one of the birch woods on the banks of the river below the house, at twelve o'clock on that day, when a battue for roe and black game should take place, and the party would adjourn to dinner at Glenbenrough afterwards. All these invitations were universally accepted.

Next day a carriage and dog-cart arrived with the whole family of Strathshielie. Glenbenrough and his three daughters were standing on the hall-steps as they drove up, and there was quite a clamour of welcome and kisses exchanged with cousins of both sexes, when they alighted. Sir Alastair, a strong, stout man, with a rubicund colour and hair of reddish hue, wrapped in a shepherd-plaid, was seated in the rumble with a tall military looking man, who descended with a stiff gouty gait, and whom he introduced as Colonel Sternbotham. Mrs. Sternbotham, a tall thin woman, was handed out, and swept an Elizabethan bow to Glenbenrough and the girls. Lady Mac Neil, Marion, and Julia, stepped out after her: the mother, a stout, good-humoured looking woman; not unlike Sir Alastair in jollity of appearance, and her daughters nice looking girls, tall, and with auburn hair and bright hazel eyes. They were dressed in shepherd tartan like their cousins, but wore fashionable little bonnets. The two sons, Roderick and Patrick Mac Neil, occupied the dog-cart,--fine stalwart young men, dressed in kilts of their regimental colours, with thick green jackets to suit. The whole party stood on the steps until the luggage was fairly unpacked, and the carriages moved off to the square. Then they were ushered in, Glenbenrough leading the way with Lady Mac Neil and Mrs. Sternbotham.

Sir Alastair detained Norah a moment, telling her that the Sternbothams had arrived at Strathshielie a few days previously. The colonel was an Englishman, with a fine old place, his wife

1

a distant relative of Lady Mac Neil; they were making a tour in Scotland, and had diverged to Strathshielie for a short visit. My dear," said Sir Alastair," don't let them see too much of our Highland spirits (I mean both liquid and natural); for they are great disciplinarians," he added, as he darted up the

stairs after the others.

Lunch was ready, and the whole party sat down without further delay.

"Dear girls, why did you not wear you wideawakes?” cried Esmé as she rushed from Marion to Julia, unloosening the ribbons of their bonnets.

"Hush," they whispered, looking with dismay towards the colonel. A slight air of restraint seemed to repress the spirits of the Strathshielie party; the girls of Glenbenrough felt its influence also; Lady Mac Neil's usual loud merry laugh was not heard, and every one seemed to feel an anxiety on the score of politeness. Colonel Sternbotham, however, talked very agreeably, describing his tour, and appealing to his wife to verify points of time or distance; while she silently formed a small circle of listeners.

Lunch over, Norah proposed showing the lady guests their rooms, while the gentlemen all left the house for a visit to the farm; Colonel Sternbotham being anxious for comparisons of the Scotch and English soils. Mrs. Sternbotham was scarcely in her room, her severe looking old Abigail in attendance, when Lady Mac Neil rushed from hers and joined her daughters and the other girls in the drawing-room.

"Oh, my dears," she exclaimed, taking Norah's hand; "you have no idea of the criticism we are all subjected to! This is the very stiffest couple imaginable: Colonel Sternbotham is quite an absurb old martinet. He never was in the Highlands before, and not in the least understanding our ways, he makes no allowances; but even in England I believe he is the dread of his neighbourhood: he keeps up such strict discipline and etiquette in his establishment. His wife, my cousin, was a nice, timid young schoolgirl, when he married her, on his retirement from the army, and he brought her completely under his governance. They have no family, fortunately, or they would be brought up to perpetuate his system of social drill ! "

"Yes," exclaimed Marion and Julia; "fancy, we were afraid to wear our wideawakes to-day, and dared not propose mounting the driving-seat; though being in a close carriage makes