knowledge of business, as should enable him, if not to make money for himself, at least to make a wise use of the money already made for him.

But his work was made easy to the lad, as was natural enough, by others besides his father, and his comings and goings were not so carefully noted, as if he had not been his father’s son. He had time and money at his disposal; not so very much of either, but more than any of his companions had, and certainly more than was good for him. Not that he fell into ill ways at this time, though that was said of him. That only came afterwards; and it might have been helped, if his father had been as wise then as he was determined with him afterwards.

But that which raised his father’s anger, was almost worse, to his thought, than falling into ill ways, in the common acceptation of the term, would have been. He might have spent money freely, even foolishly, and his name might have been spoken with the names of men whose society his father would have shunned or scorned, and he might have been reproved and then forgiven. But that he should love and be determined to marry a girl in humble life, the daughter of a sailor’s widow, and he not one and twenty, seemed to his father worse than folly and even worse than sin. The father had never given a thought to any woman except his sister, till he was thirty-five, and that his son, a mere lad, should wish to marry any one, was a folly not to be tolerated.

He blamed his sister in the matter, for bonny Elsie Calderwood was the daughter of the man who had brought home to her the bitter tidings that her lover was lost, and Jean had cared for and comforted his widow and orphans when their turn came to weep for one who returned no more. But he was wrong in this, for she had known nothing of the young man’s wishes, certainly she had never abetted him in his folly, as was said. Indeed she had taken no thought of danger for him. “They were just a’ bairns thegither,” she had said, “and had kenned one another all their lives.”

For the Calderwood bairns had been the chosen companions of Geordie and his sisters in the days when, openly scorning the attendance of nursemaids, they had clambered over the rocks, and waded in the shallows along the shore, and gathered dulse and birds’ eggs with the rest of the bairns of the town. When his sisters went away, after their mother’s death; the intimacy was naturally enough continued by George, and all the more closely that he missed his sisters, and was oppressed by the dreariness of the life at home. It was natural enough, though the father could not see it so, and he spoke angrily and unwisely to his son.

But Mrs Calderwood was as proud in her way as Mr Dawson was in his, and she scorned the thought of keeping the rich man’s son to the promise he had made without leave asked of her. She was also as hard in her way as he was in his, and forbade the young man to enter her house, and gave him no chance to disobey her. But in a place like Portie young folks can meet elsewhere than at home, and one or other of them must be sent away.

So with Miss Jean’s advice and help Elsie was sent to get a year at a boarding-school, as was wise and right, all her friends in Portie were given to understand. But she went away without giving back her promise for all that her mother could say. She went cheerfully enough, “to make herself fitter to be his wife,” she said. But she never returned; a slow strong fever seized her where she was, and first her mother went to her, and then Miss Jean, whose heart was sore for them all.

And then Miss Jean did what the mother never would have done. When she saw that the end was drawing near, she wrote one letter to her nephew telling him to come and take farewell of his love, and another to his father telling him that so she had done. All this mattered little however. For it was doubtful whether the dying girl recognised the lover who called so wildly on her name. But she died in his arms, and he went home with her mother and his aunt to Portie and laid her down in the bleak kirkyard; and then he went away speaking no word to his father, in his youthful despair and anger, indeed never looking on his face.

There had been something said, before all this came to pass between them, of the lad’s being sent to London for a while, to learn how business was done in a great banking-house, one of the partners of which was a friend of his father; and after a time he was heard of there. But he did not write to his father directly, and he never drew a shilling of the money that his father had deposited in his name.

He did not stay long in his place in the London bank, but went away, leaving no trace behind him, and was lost to them all; and it was long before his name was spoken by his father again. Even Miss Jean, having no words of comfort to put with it, never named to him the name of his son, for whom she knew he was grieving with anger and pain unspeakable. It was to be doubted, Jean thought, whether these days were not longer, and drearier, and “waur to thole” than even the days that had followed the death of the mother of the lad.

But they had to be borne, and he left himself in these days little time for brooding over his troubles. He devoted himself to business, with all his old earnestness, and wealth flowed in upon him, and the fear was strong in his sister’s heart, that he was beginning, in the desolation that had fallen upon him, to love it for its own sake. He added to Saughleas a few fields on one side, and a farm or two on the other, which the necessities of the owners had put into the market, at this time; but it was more to oblige these needy men, than because he wanted their land. He had the money in hand, he said indifferently to his sister, and the land would ay bring its price. But he took little pleasure in Saughleas for a while.

When Geordie had been gone a year and more, his sisters came home from school. They had been away long, and their father had, as he said, to make their acquaintance over again. They had changed from merry girls of fifteen and sixteen, into grown up young ladies,—“fine ladies” their father called them to their aunt, and a good many people in Portie, called them “fine ladies” also, for a while. They looked to be fine ladies, with their London dresses, and London manners, and some folk added, their “London pride.” They held their heads high, and carried themselves erect and firmly as they walked, and spoke softly and in “high English,” which looked like pride to some of their old friends, who were more than half afraid of the young ladies of Saughleas, they said. But it soon came to be known that what looked like pride was more than half shyness, and as for the “high English,” the kindly Scotch fell very readily from their lips on occasion.

It cannot be said that they made themselves very happy in Saughleas for a time. They came home in November, and that is a dreary month on the east coast, indeed all the winter is dreary there. There were gay doings in the best houses in Portie to welcome them home, and they enjoyed them well. For they had only been school-girls in London, and the gayeties they had been permitted to mingle in there, had been mostly of the kind which are supposed to blend improvement of some sort with the pleasure to be enjoyed, and though they doubtless valued such opportunities and made good use of them, both for pleasure and improvement, the gayeties of Portie were quite different and more to their taste. They were young and pretty and gay, and the kindness and the admiration so freely bestowed on them were very pleasant to them both. But they would have preferred the house in the High-street, where they had all been born, in these first days, for their home.

Saughleas was dull and dreary