I am sure my aunt would not wish to take away her home," replied Grace, hurriedly, also flushing with vexation, and resolving that she would certainly listen with more interest, if she happened to be present at the next interview, to Mr. Graham's narratives concerning the improvements, seeing that they seemed to involve the improving away of the natives off the face of the country.

Just then the sound of a horn came across the heather, and Geordie started off, saying, "There's Gowrie's horn sounding; I must away and gather home the kye." And he darted off across the hillocks in search of his scattered charges, giving a succession of whoops and shrieks as he brandished his cudgel and whirled about in the discharge of his duty, quite ignoring Grace, who still stood on the stepping-stones, feeling rather sorry that the interview had terminated so abruptly, for she remembered a great many questions she would like to have asked.

Presently Geordie, by dint of his exertions, managed to arrange the cattle, with the formidable Blackie in front, in quite an orderly procession, and he now prepared to move towards the farm, whose white gables were visible from the pasture. He never looked back at Grace, or gave any parting sign of recognition of her presence, and she began to fear that perhaps after all he might forget about her invitation and fail to appear on Sunday.

"You won't forget to come to Kirklands on Sunday afternoon, Geordie?" she called after him, trying to raise her voice above the noisy little stream.

"Didna I say that I would come and bring Jean? and I aye keep my trysts," he shouted back again, with a look of indignant astonishment that she should have imagined him capable of forgetting or failing to keep his promise; and then he trudged away cheerily, swinging his stick, more full of the idea of this "tryst" than Grace could guess, though his mind dwelt chiefly on the thought of what a grand thing it would be for little Jean to get a chance of learning to read. He was painfully conscious that he had signally failed in his attempts to teach her, and he was the only teacher she had ever had.

In this little, unkempt, sun-bleached herd-boy there dwelt a very tender, chivalrous heart, and on his little sister Jean all his wealth, of affection had as yet been bestowed. Never did faithful knight serve his lady-love more devotedly than Geordie had this little brown maiden, since her earliest babyhood.

They were orphans, and ever since they could remember their home had been with their grandmother, a frail, dreamy old woman, so deaf that the most active and varied gesticulation was the only means of conveying to her the remotest idea of what one wished to say. Geordie, indeed, was the only person sufficiently careless of his lungs to attempt the medium of speech, and then his conversation was pitched in the same key as when he performed his herding functions.

To the little Jean, Geordie had been playmate and protector in one, her absolute slave from the time she sat on her old grandmother's knee, and, tiring of that position, lisped out, "Deordie, Deordie," holding out her little brown hands so that he might take her, and then they would sit together on the earthen floor of the cottage, and the gipsy locks would intermingle with Geordie's flaxen hair, which yielded meekly to as rough treatment from the little brown fingers as ever hapless terrier of the nursery was called on to undergo. But Geordie's sun-bleached locks had always been at her service, and his head and hands too; though it was not much that the little herd-boy had been able to do for his sister. Often as he lay on the heather, watching his cows, he smiled with delight as he thought of the time when he should be promoted into a farm servant, with wages enough to send Jean to school, and to buy her a pretty print dress, all dotted with blue stars, like the one Mistress Gowrie wore. As yet all his earnings had gone to pay board to his grandmother, and for present necessities in the shape of shoes and corduroys. He had in one of his pockets a little chamois bag, containing a few shillings, which he always carried about with him; and it was one of his recreations to spread them on one of the flat, grey stones and count the silver pieces as they glittered in the sun. He knew well what he meant to do with them when the pile grew large enough; but its growth was a very slow one, and required much self-denial on Geordie's part, seeing that the component parts of each shilling were generally gathered in a stray penny now and then, which he earned by holding a market-going farmer's cob; and if, by a rare chance, a sixpence happened to be the unexpected result of one such service, then Geordie felt that he was really getting rich, and would soon be able to buy what he had wished for so long. It was not anything for himself, or even for Jean, as might have been expected. Somebody had once told him that if his grandmother only had an ear-trumpet she would be able to hear people when they spoke to her. Geordie had the vaguest idea of what such an instrument might be like, but decided that probably it bore some resemblance in size or sound to the horn that summoned his cows home; and having ascertained how much money it would cost, he resolved that he would buy one for his granny whenever he could save the sum.

The boy's heart was full of tender pity for the old deaf woman, with her weird helpless ways, at whose side he had grown since his infancy; though she could hardly have been said to "bring him up," for Granny Baxter had been shiftless and unlovable when she was in possession of her faculties, and her character had not improved under her trying infirmities. Her grandson, however, always treated her with a tender patience which no querulousness of the old woman could weary. Not so little Jean. Only once she could remember her brother looking very grave and grieved, and it was one day when she had refused to do something that the old woman wanted, and put her in a white heat of passion by her rebellion. Having escaped beyond the reach of her poor granny's tottering feet, and, finding her way to the field where Geordie was herding, she began to narrate her story in triumph, when her brother's grave silence made her feel how naughty she had been. After that day little Jean always tried to "mind" granny more, though she never attained to the same unwearied service as Geordie.

That Jean's education was being sadly neglected her brother felt painfully, and he had made various efforts to teach her the little he knew himself; but the knowledge contained in the "Third Primer" barely sufficed for teaching purposes, and Geordie found, moreover, that the little Jean was by no means an apt scholar. Indeed, the most hopeless confusion continued to prevail in her small mind concerning the letters of the alphabet, notwithstanding all his efforts. The natural history lessons, however, had been a greater success; she had learnt from Geordie the names of most trees and flowers that grew wild in the valley, and knew the difference between a wagtail and a wren, which some people who know their alphabet do not. Geordie sometimes thought that it might be nice for Jean to go to the kirk, for it was from Jean's point of view that he looked at most things in life. But then there was the insuperable difficulty about Sunday clothes, so the idea had always been given up after due consideration each time it presented itself to his mind, and the church-going was reserved for that golden period when Jean would be clothed in the blue-starred print frock, and he should have a suit of Sunday clothes. Perhaps, with the encouragement of the ear-trumpet, even frail granny might be conducted to church, Geordie thought, hopefully, for he knew that she had the essentials of church-going, as they presented themselves to his mind, stowed away in an ancient chest-of-drawers where she kept her valuables.

But in the interval, and while these happy days of good wages and schooling for Jean and Sunday clothes still lay in the distance, this invitation to go to the