is over."

"But, papa, how can you shoot those happy birds flying in the air, and not doing any harm?"

"Why, goosey, for the same reason as you knock down your nine-pins—for the sake of sport, to be sure," replied Mr. Clifford laughing at the distressed face of his little daughter.

"Come and shut up this little philosopher, Major," he continued, turning to one of his guests, a kindly-looking old gentleman, who had come sauntering up and joined them. "She is quite shocked at the monstrous cruelty we have been guilty of to-day. I begin to feel quite like the Roman Emperor you were telling me of the other day, Blanche; only flies were his special partiality, were they not?"

"Ah! depend upon it, Blanche has been having a course of Wordsworth," said the Major, as he shook hands. "Is it not he who says—

But I shouldn't have thought you had arrived at the Wordsworthian stage yet—eh! Miss Blanchie?" said the kindly old gentleman, as he looked smilingly at the distressed little damsel.

But Blanche was in no mood for joking just then; she glided away towards the castle, and, finding her way to her room, she sat down at the window from which she had got her first glimpse of the glen.

The bright morning light had all vanished now, and the hills looked grey and solemn in the gathering twilight. A great silence seemed to have fallen on the moors. Blanche could hear no bleating of sheep, no cry of the moor-fowl, no merry whirring of wings; and, to her fanciful little brain, it seemed as if the valley were mourning for its dead, for the little birds that would never sleep on the heather again, or mount to the sky with the returning sun.

And as Blanche sat thinking in the gathering darkness, she got among those crooked things that cannot be made straight by any theories of ours, those mysteries which we must be content to leave to the wise love of Him who has told us that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the knowledge of that heavenly Father who had watched over this little girl always, counting her of more value than many sparrows.

Blanche was not sorry to have her reveries interrupted by her maid Ellis coming into the room, bringing lights with her. And as she laid out the pretty white frock and blue sash, in which Blanche was to be dressed for the evening, she said, "Well, missie, and how have you enjoyed your first day in the 'Ighlands of Scotland?—more than I've done, I hope? There's cook raging, fit to make one's life a burden about all those birds to pluck. She says it will just be game, game, right on now, till one feels ashamed to meet a bird."

"Oh! hush, Ellis. Please don't speak to me about those birds. I cannot get them out of my head. It does seem so very sad."

"Why, Miss Blanche, you're as bad as cook. For my part, I think they're uncommon good eating."

"It isn't that, Ellis; but only think how happy they all were this morning among those hills, and now—I wonder how papa could do it! It does seem so cruel."

"Come now, missie, that's what I won't stand to hear noways—the master called cruel! A more kinder 'arted gentleman don't step. He wouldn't hurt a fly—that he wouldn't. You'll be a callin' my old father a murderer next, because he's a butcher, I suppose, missie?"

"Oh! that's quite different, Ellis," said Blanche, apologetically. "But, to be sure, what lots of killing there is! It does seem very dreadful, when one thinks of it."

"Well, missie, you don't think it dreadful to eat a mutton-chop when you are hungry, I'll warrant." And this retort seemed quite unanswerable at the moment; so Ellis had the last word, as the last curl was adjusted, and her little mistress descended to join her father and his guests in the drawing-room.

Blanche watched wistfully for an opportunity of a quiet talk with her papa; she had so many things that she wanted to say to him. There was still a secret hankering in the bottom of her heart to go to the moors, for she could not bear to think of another day without him. But the time came to say 'Good-night' before any opportunity for a private talk offered itself, and Blanche went to sleep after her first day in the Highlands with a disappointed heart.

III.

MORAG'S HOME.

N the rocky ledge of a hill overlooking the Glen, there was perched a little hut, which seemed as if it had huddled itself against the rugged, grey crags for protection, and stood on its morsel of grassy turf trembling at the wild scene around. The mountains, which from the valley looked serene and blue, reared themselves above the tiny white shieling in dark towering masses, and the river seemed like a silver thread as it took its winding way through the strath.

On the same Christmas Eve as Blanche Clifford was born in her sheltered English home, another little girl had come into the world in that rocky eyrie among the mountains; and Morag Dingwall, too, was left motherless from the hour of her birth. Her father was gamekeeper at Glen Eagle; the hut had been built by his grandfather, who, in his day, ruled over the realms of deer and grouse in the glen; and it had once been a better-cared-for home than it was in these later days. Careful fingers had striven to repair the ravages of the wind and rain, for the little shieling was mercilessly exposed to both; the shelter the great gray rocks offered being a treacherous one, and its foundation damp. There had once been an attempt made to delve a kailyard out of the unfruitful soil, and the turf in front of the cottage was kept smooth and trim. But the present possessor of the hut did not seem to care to make the most of his barren, rocky home; he merely grumbled about it from time to time to the land-agent, the only representative whom he ever saw of the Highland lord who owned the Glen. But the factor thought that such a great strong fellow as Dingwall might mend his own roof, while the keeper thought that such a great rich fellow as the laird might give him a new roof, and a new house too; so year after year the rain had come drip, drip, through the porous roof on the earthen floor, ever since Morag could remember, till she had got quite used to it, and to a great many things besides.

The keeper was a strange man, and had led a strange life in his early days, the people of the Glen said. When a lad he had suddenly left Glen Eagle one winter, and he appeared only to have returned to take his father's place, when the old man was laid in the little grave-yard on the hillside. And a better gamekeeper could not have been found. He knew every foot of the Glen by heart. He was the best angler in the country side. There was no keener eye and no steadier hand in all Stratheagle; he could spy the game at incredible distances, and knew every winding path, each short cut, all deceptive bogs. People said that the little Morag was the only human being whom Alaster Dingwall ever really loved. He had reared his baby-daughter with his own hands, the kennels had been her nursery, the dogs her playmates. As soon as she was able to toddle, he had taken her to the moors, often strapped on his back, fast asleep. Before Morag was seven years old she had become almost as hardy a mountaineer as her father, going with him to the hills, carrying his game-bag, trotting by his