“Ah, yes, indeed,” said he, “she is reading the future in her palm, reading it backward, and finding out what this Angus Ingestre has to do with her fate!”

“Nay, but,”——­said I, and then held fast again.

“Here’s a young woman that’s keen to hear of her home, of her sisters, of Queen Mary Strathsay, and of Margray’s little Graeme!”

“What do I care for Johnny Graeme? the little old man!”

“What, indeed?  And you’ll not be home a day and night before you’ll be tossing and hushing him, and the moon’ll not be too good for him to have, should he cry for it!”

“Johnny Graeme?”

“No.  Angus Graeme!”

“Oh!—­Margray has a son?  Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“When you were so eager to know!”

“It’s all in my letters, I suppose.  But Margray has a son, and she’s named it for you, and her husband let her?”

“’Deed, he wasn’t asked.”

“Why not?”

“Come, child, read your letters.”

“Nay, I’ve but a half-hour more with you; that was the second quarter struck; I’ll read them when you’re gone.—­Why not?”

“Johnny Graeme is dead.”

That sobered me a thought.

“And Margray?” I asked.

“Poor Margray,—­she feels very badly.”

“You don’t mean to say”——­

“That she cared for him?  But I do.”

“Now, Angus Ingestre, I heard Margray tell her mother she’d liefer work on the roads with a chain and ball than marry him!  It’s all you men know of women.  Love Johnny Graeme!  Oh, poor man, rest his soul!  I’m sore sorry for him.  He’s gone where there’s no gold to make, unless they smelt it there; and I’m not sure but they do,—­sinsyne one can see all the evil it’s the root of, and all the woe it works,—­and he bought Margray, you know he did, Angus!”

“It’s little Alice talking so of her dead brother!”

“He’s no brother of mine; I never took him, if Margray did.  Brother indeed! there’s none such,—­unless it’s you, Angus!” And there all the blood flew into my cheeks, and they burned like two fires, and I was fain to clap my palms upon them.

“No,” said Angus.  “I’m not your brother, Ailie darling, and never wish to be,—­but”——­

“And Margray?” I questioned, quickly,—­the good Lord alone knew why.  “Poor Margray! tell me of her.  Perhaps she misses him; he was not, after all, so curst as Willy Scott.  Belike he spoke her kindly.”

“Always,” said Angus, gnawing in his lip a moment ere the word.  “And the child changed him, Mary Strathsay says.  But perhaps you’re right; Margray makes little moan.”

“She was aye a quiet lass.  Poor Johnny!—­I’m getting curst myself.  Well, it’s all in my letters.  But you, Angus dear, how came you here?”

“I?  My father came to London; and being off on leave from my three years’ cruise, I please myself in passing my holiday, and spend the last month of it in Edinboro’, before rejoining the ship.”