strangers when he is ill."

"I lost my wife," said John Sandford, abruptly.

"I'm sorry," said Doctor Bayne. "I forgot that; I now remember hearing of it. Well, it cannot be helped, but it makes a great difference having young ones about one; young people make one young again."

He stayed some time from pure kindness, and Mr. Sandford was anything but grateful to him; he wanted to think out by himself the thought his words had given him. However, he asked him to come next day; his visit was something to look forward to.

When he left Mr. Sandford lay quietly thinking.

"Young people make one young again."

Perhaps this was true; he was not old; he was strong and had never been ill. He was a hale strong man under sixty, and yet the doctor spoke as though now he must expect illness, then after illness came the end, yes, the end!

The evening shadows crept slowly over everything; all the hours since the doctor had left him John Sandford lay quiet, thinking, thinking of all that had come and gone, all that might come and go.

At length he slept, and in his sleep, caused by the soothing draught given to him, he dreamed strange things; some one, his sister, seemed pursuing him with something that always threatened to overwhelm him, and two girls kept warding it off. He saw their outstretched hands, and he had a sort of consciousness that with them there, she could not hurt him. The dream was so vivid that when he woke he looked round him expecting still to see the pursuing figure. He gave a deep sigh, the reality had been to terrible so him.

The morning light was struggling against the night shadows; it was still very early, so early that no one was astir, save a sleepy girl whose duty it was to light the kitchen-fire, and who was so startled by the sound of his bell that she let her sticks burn out without any coal while she went and stared at the bell-clapper as though there she could discover the reason for its early motion. As she looked it rang again, the master must be ill—what ought she to do? Rouse the cook and risk a furious scolding from her, or go and see what he wanted? While she was hesitating it rang a third time, and in her confusion she did both, she rushed into the cook's room and told her the bell was ringing like mad, and that Mr. Sandford was ill, and she fled upstairs in breathless haste, and knocked and went in, expecting to see her master on the floor in a fit, when she was quite prepared to throw her apron over her head and scream to the best of her ability.

"What do you mean by keeping me waiting and not answering my bell?" he asked in a tone of fury.

She was so surprised to find him able to speak at all that she held her tongue, and this was the best thing she could do.

"I want writing materials and a cup of tea," he said. "Where is Robert?"

"I believe he's in bed, sir, and Mrs. Chalmers, she is not up. I'll make some tea."

"And what the —— do I keep servants for, if they are all to lie in bed in the morning?"

The girl, frightened by his manner, left his door wide open, and he had the satisfaction of hearing her call out to the head of the establishment: "Oh, Mrs. Chalmers, maister Sandford he's just very ill, and he is just lying there and cursing and swearing like anything."

Mrs. Chalmers, fat, forty, but not fair, panted upstairs, raging at Robert for not being "at hand."

Mr. Sandford repeated his wishes, and he added, "It's high time you had a mistress to look after you all, and you'll have one too."

Down went Mrs. Chalmers, who was "that upset" she first sat down and had a cry, then she scolded the girl violently, making those general and vague accusations which are so much harder to bear than any that are definite; scolded Robert and the housemaid, who was used to it, and had too thick a skin to mind; and, the tea being made, she poured out the first cup for Mr. Sandford, which was less good than the second, which she took for herself; then she felt better and retired to her room, till the house was "right," and to reflect in silence upon the threat held over her of a mistress to keep all in order.

It will be seen that all these things together combined to bring about two results—the peremptory command to Mrs. Dorriman, and an invitation to Grace and Margaret Rivers to consider Renton House as their home, at any rate for the present.

If there was a wide difference between the way this invitation was given, there was a still wider difference in the way it was received. We have seen how poor Mrs. Dorriman felt it to be the loss of her independence and the uprooting of her quiet and peaceful life.

But the Rivers girls had that boundless spring of hope that is the delightful portion of youth and health combined; and in the invitation conveyed to them through the banker they only saw fresh kindness.

They had been all these years at a very second-rate English school; they had no visitors, nothing, not even holidays, to break the monotony of school life, and the prospect of going anywhere was exciting.

They had the misfortune there of being just a little above their companions in position, their father being a man of good family and their mother well connected; they had also a little independence of their own, a hundred and twenty pounds a year, and they were the wards of Mr. Sandford, whose wealth was immensely exaggerated, as fortune often is when at all undefined.

The two sisters who kept the school were kindly-intentioned, weak, and very ignorant women, whose educational deficiencies did not they thought signify, because they supervised only, and taught nothing themselves—the fact being that they were not capable of distinguishing real teaching from something of a very superficial kind.

The girls went there at six and eight years old; they were nice-looking girls, with no real beauty, but good-looking enough for partial friends to admire, and enemies to dispraise their personal appearance. The old ladies were fond of them, flattered and spoiled them, and their companions followed suit. Never did two girls go out into the wide world less fitted to take up a position in it properly. Grace had a rooted conviction that in some way she was a little better than every one else, and must always lead everywhere; and Margaret, herself very gentle, timid, and of a clinging nature, saw everything from Grace's standpoint, measured everything by Grace's standard, conceived her to be the most beautiful, cleverest, and most wonderful creature ever made, and thought it quite natural that she should expect always to be first everywhere. Everything she did she conceived to be almost inspired, she admired her, looked up to her, and had not a thought or feeling of her own, apart from her.

The girls left school, escorted as far as Edinburgh by a teacher going there. They were very much surprised no one met them there, but they went on to Glasgow, confident that here some one would come for them.

Never, as far as they could remember, had they left school since first going there, and even Grace, who was independent and capable, she thought, of going anywhere by herself, was depressed when they arrived in Glasgow.

It was a drizzling, dark autumnal day, the heavy pall of smoke that makes that prosperous place look so dismal and dingy to all outsiders, lay over everything. They could not see a hundred yards on either side of them, and when they got out of the carriage they were bewildered and dejected.

Every one seemed too busy to attend to them, and Grace thought it most extraordinary, and Margaret still more extraordinary, that no one paid her any attention. Surely they could all see who she was?

It was with difficulty that they got some information, and found that they had to go to a different station, and in haste, too, if they wished to catch the only train that went to Renton that night.

Tired and disappointed, they got a cab, and no more forlorn girls crossed the busy town than those two that day.

At the other