He scarcely spoke on his way back to the boat, and Katie perplexed herself vainly trying to account for his silence.  It must be, she thought, that he had been vexed by the sight of so many girls and the sound of their idle chatter.  He would have liked it better if nobody but the family had been at home.  What a shame for a man to live alone as he did, and get into such unsocial ways!  He grew more and more averse to society each year.  Now, if he were only married, and had a bright home, where people came and went, with a bit of a tea now and then, how good it would be for him,—­take the stiffness out of his ways, and make him more as he used to be fifteen, or even ten years ago!  And so the good Katie went on in her placid mind, trotting along silently by his side, waiting for him to speak.

“Where did she get the heather?”

“What!” exclaimed Katie.  The irrelevant question sounded like the speech of one talking in his sleep.  “Oh,” she continued, “ye mean Elspie!”

“Ay,” said Donald.  “She’d a bit of heather in her belt,—­the true heather, not sticks like yon,” pointing a contemptuous finger toward Katie’s bonnet.  “Where did she get it?”

“Mother’s always the heather growing in the house,” answered Katie.  “She says she’s homesick unless she sees it.  It was grandmother brought it over in the first, and it’s never been let die out.”

“My mother the same,” said Donald.  “It’s the first blossom I remember, an’ I’m thinking it will be the last,” he continued, gazing at Katie absently; but his face did not look as if it were absently he gazed.  There was a glow on his cheeks, and an intense expression in his eyes which Katie had never seen there.  They warmed her heart.

“Yes,” she said, “one can never forget what one has loved in the youth.”

“True, Katie, true.  There’s nothing like one’s own and earliest,” replied Donald, full of his new and thrilling emotion; and as he said it he reached out his hand and took hold of Katie’s, as if they were boy and girl together.  “Many’s the time I’ve raced wi’ ye this way, Katie,” he said affectionately.

“Ay, when I was a wee thing; an’ ye always let go my hand at last, and pretended I could outrin ye,” laughed Katie, blissful tears filling her eyes.

What a happy day was this!  Had it not been an inspiration to bring Donald back to the old farm-house?  Katie was sure it had.  She was filled with sweet reveries; and so silent on the way home that her merry friends joked her unmercifully about her long walk inland with the Captain.

It was late in the night, or rather it was early the next morning, when the “Heather Bell” reached her wharf.

“I’ll go up with ye, Katie,” said Donald.  “It’s not decent for ye to go alone.”

And when he bade her good-night he looked half-wistfully in her face, and said:  “But it’s a lonely house for ye to come to, Katie, an’ not a soul but yourself in it.”  And he held her hand in his affectionately, as a cousin might.