“Would you not be terrified?” asked Mrs. Parker.

“If I saw what I believed to be a ghost, I should die of terror,” said Bessie; “especially if I was alone and it was the dead of night; but I have no faith whatever in ghosts.”

“It is getting rather chilly,” said Mrs. Parker.

“Perhaps we had better go down now, then,” Miss Ormiston said.  “Mr. Forrester, would you come out of your brown study and let us pass?”

“Certainly.  I’ll see you all safe off the battlements.  I wasn’t in a brown study:  I was in a mist.”

“Then take care:  people in a mist always think they are going the right way when they are going directly wrong.”

“If I only knew the right way!” he said.

“That’s true, Mr. Forrester,” said Mrs. Parker.  “If we only knew the right way; and people tell you to be guided by Providence, but I say I never know when it is Providence and when it is myself;” and she threaded her way down the narrow stairs, followed by the rest of the party.

III.

The dining-room, with its low roof, its crimson walls, dark furniture and handsome fire (the fires at Cockhoolet were always handsome:  Bessie was the architect and superintended the building herself; they never looked harum-scarum nor meaningless nor thoughtless, nor as if they were not meant to burn; they combined taste, comfort, and, as a consequence, economy; everything tasteful and comfortable is in the long run economical), its table-cloth, glistening like the summit of the Alps and laden with good things, looked a place where people even not in love with each other might, unless naturally perverse, be very happy.

Mrs. Parker, being from town, was in raptures with every country eatable, especially the scones, which she found were manufactured by Miss Ormiston herself.

“And have they,” asked Mr. Parker, “the sustaining power that the cakes made here of old had?”

“If you eat enough of them you may get to Edinburgh to-night before you are very hungry,” said John.

“The abbey cakes were unleavened,” Bessie explained, “which these are not, so that they are less substantial fare.”

“What do you raise them with?” asked Mrs. Parker.

“Butter, milk and carbonate of soda,” said Miss Ormiston.

“We call Bessie a doctor of the Carbon,” said John:  “she makes very good scones, although you would hardly go from here to Canterbury on the strength of one of them.”

“Mr. Forrester, are you dull?” asked Jessie:  “you are not saying anything.”

“I am too busy eating the holy cakes, Jessie,” said Edwin:  “your sister is a master in her art.”

“I say,” Jessie went on, “are you ever dull at home?  When I told Bessie that you had come she was surprised, and said that you must surely be dull at home.  I am sorry for you if you are:  you should come here oftener—­we are never dull here.”