submission than the guilt-stricken Blackie the badge of punishment.  There was a subdued pathetic look of almost human remorse and woe in the eye of the brute, as he was led past the place where Geordie lay low among the heather.  The hands that had so often fed him and made a clean soft bed for him at night, often stroking his great knotted neck, and never raised in unjust punishment, lying helpless and shattered now, and the fair locks hung across his face, all dabbled with blood.  Elsie was now kneeling by his side, but he was quite unconscious of her presence, and heedless of her low wailing, as she looked wildly round to see if nobody was coming to help Geordie, who had helped her so bravely.  Little Jean had hurried shrieking to the farm, with the news of the accident, and Mistress Gowrie presently appeared, to Elsie’s intense relief.  She was a kindly woman, and felt conscience-stricken as she kneeled beside the little herd-boy; for she knew that it was not with his will that Blackie roamed at large among those knolls.  She had happened to hear his last expostulation with her husband on the point; and this was how it had ended.  But she did not think he was dead.  Elsie could hardly restrain a cry of delight when she heard the whispered word that he lived still.  How joyfully she carried water in her sun-bonnet from the flowing river, how tenderly she sprinkled it on his face and hands, and wiped the bloodstained locks.

And then old Farmer Gowrie came and stood with his hands behind his back, and a shadow on his furrowed face, as he gazed on his young servant with an uneasy stare.  He kept restlessly moving backwards and forwards to see whether the still motionless figure showed any sign of life, till his wife reminded him that Granny Baxter was probably ignorant of the terrible accident which had happened to her grandson, and asked him to go and break the news to her.  Little Jean had been there before him, however; and Gowrie found the old woman crawling helplessly along in the direction of the knolls, quite stupefied by the terrible tidings that Jean had managed to convey to her deaf ears.  The little girl seemed possessed with the idea that Miss Campbell would be sure to be able to help Geordie in this extremity; and so she left her old granny to find her way alone, and had hurried away in the direction of Kirklands to tell her sorrowful tale, meeting Grace, as we know, in the elm avenue, after her eventful talk with her brother.

They were already half-way to the stepping-stones, when Grace remembered—­feeling it unaccountable that, even in her anxiety, she should have forgotten for an instant—­that Walter must know what had happened to Geordie—­Geordie, to whom he owed so much.  She felt that she could not leave the little weeping girl to go on her way alone; but just as she was standing hesitating what it might be best to do, she met one of the dwellers in the valley, who promised to go at once and convey a message