performed within their precincts, as for that matter within the entire bounds of Scotland. Above all, their credulity was imposed upon by the coarsely cruel conduct of Lady Fermor. As Iris reflected, her courage and even her spirits, though they had been greatly tried, revived a little. In spite of the outrageous interpretation which Lady Fermor had chosen to put upon the story, it was simply preposterous. Nobody could treat it seriously for a moment. Neither the pretended bride nor bridegroom was in earnest, and as little was King Lud who spoke the words, or Marianne Dugdale who prompted them. She was at the bottom of the practical joke, and yet she had strangely, though not without protest, according to the innkeeper, gone over to the enemy. Of course no reasonable person could attach the slightest importance to the scandal.

Iris did not suffer her heart to fall before the disheartening recollection of the limited number of reasonable persons in the world, and the sorrowful comprehension that the bare breath of the most incredible scandal is baleful, even where the sins of the fathers are not visited on the children....

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE LAW OF THE LAND.

THE landlord had appeared to lay himself out for Iris's confidence, but he had not uttered his suspicions in so many words. Iris had not inherited her grandmother's propensity of invariably choosing men for her advisers. It would be doubly disagreeable for Iris to try to make a man measure the extent of the late piece of folly-as mere folly. Yet she wanted a mouth-piece to tell it to all who would listen. Her security lay in the immediate publication of the truth, and her inclination pointed to the bright yet douce girl Jeannie, who had spoken only too graphically and amusingly of the Border marriages to the English young ladies.

Iris, walking restlessly about the room, saw from the end window Jeannie, in her morning calicot wrapper, linen apron and bare arms,

carrying a great basketful of wrung-out clothes to spread over a washing-green. Iris took a swift resolve to go out and talk to the girl and tell her the truth, which she would surely convey to her master and mistress.

As Iris traversed the rambling passages of the old house and sought the way to the washing-green, she was oppressed by the consciousness of having become the centre of attraction to her neighbours, while they openly or covertly looked at and watched her. This knowledge when it mingles in any transaction of life, whether joyful or sorrowful, lends a strange unreality to the affair, and gives to the performers in the true drama a double sense of being at once the veritable persons who are passing through a glad or miserable crisis in their history, and at the same time actors on a stage, playing, whether they will or not, for the benefit of onlookers.

Iris found Jeannie busily employed on a haugh or strip of meadow by the side of one of those rapid, white and brown, brawling streamlets, the bonnie burnies,' with their endless songs, which are among the chief delights of the North country. Though the

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brook was swollen by the rains of yesterday, so that every slippery stepping-stone was covered, and its clear water rendered turbid, yet it did its best to flash in the sunshine and 'jouk' round each corner...

Jeannie glanced up from her occupation and made one of the curtsheys,' which, unless in remote country places, and among very primitive people, form now the depth of respectful greeting reserved solely for royalty.

Iris had grown nervous, or else Jeannie was really shyer than she had been before, and the single look which she gave was not directed so much to the visitor's face, as to her uncovered left hand.

Was Jeannie look

ing in vain for that bit giftie' of a weddingring, which, though it plays no part in the Scotch marriage ceremony, is always bestowed as the first token from the husband to the wife, and in this light is regarded as a proof of marriage and universally worn, till death, in Scotland as well as in England?

'Oh what a miserable day it was yesterday, Jeannie!' began Iris, referring to the weather.

'Did you think sae, my leddy?' inquired

Jeannie, as if there could be two opinions on the subject, while she completed laying out a row of towels on the grass.

'Did you not think so? Have you so much worse weather?' Then Iris added hastily, with regard to the changed form of address which Jeannie had used, that had struck the listener's roused ear, But I'm my lady"; only my grandmother, the old lady who left early this morning, is entitled to be spoken to in that way.'

not "

'As you like, mem,' said Jeannie slowly and doubtfully. 'You should ken best; it is for you to tak' your choice how you're to be ca'd. For the weather, weel, whiles we've deep snaw in the winter, and sleet as late as April, and rain-no' drizzlin' but poorin' in buckets-fu', with spates in the burn till it rins ower a' the haugh, and the beasts are flooded in the byre and the stable, and we're keepit in the hoose for twa or three days at a time. But I was meaning that it is often the mind that makes the weather to folk; the sun will be shinin' for some when there's nocht but cluds for others-div you no think sae, mem? In that case yesterday michtna hae been sae dowie a day to you.'