The end of the white, rose-smothered boathouse was towards them.  A tall, bowed woman’s figure passed quickly round the gable.

“Is that your aunt?” he asked.

“That is my aunt Annie,” said the girl; “my aunt Barbara is confined to her bed.”

“And what is your name, if I may ask?”

The girl glanced at him.  He was certainly not making fun of her now.

“My name is Grace Allen,” she said.

They paced together up the path.  The bridle rein slipped from his arm, but his hand instinctively caught it, and Eulalie cropped crisply at the grasses on the bank, unregarded of her master.

They did not shake hands when they parted, but their eyes followed each other a long way.

“Where is the money?” said Aunt Barbara from her bed as Grace Allen came in at the open door.

“Dear me!” said the girl, frightened:  “I have forgotten to ask him for it!”

“Did I ever see sic a lassie!  Rin after him an’ get it; haste ye fast.”

But Gregory was far out of reach by the time Grace got to the door.  The sound of hoofs came from high up the wooded heights.

Gregory Jeffray reached the Barr in time for late breakfast.  There was a large house company.  The men were prowling discontentedly about, looking under covers or cutting slices from dishes on the sideboard; but the ladies were brightly curious, and eagerly welcomed Gregory.  He at least did not rise with a headache and a bad temper every morning.  They desired an account of his morning’s ride.  But on the way home he had changed his mind about telling of his adventure.  He said that he had had a pleasant ride.  It had been a beautiful morning.

“But have you nothing whatever to tell us?” they asked; for, indeed, they had a right to expect something.

Gregory said nothing.  This was not usual, for at other times when he had nothing to tell, it did not cost him much to invent something interesting.

“You are very dull this morning, Sheriff,” said the youngest daughter of the house, who, being the baby and pretty, had grown pettishly privileged in speech.

But deep within him Gregory was saying, “What a blessing that I forgot to pay the ferry!”

When he got outside he said to his host, “Is there such a place hereabouts as the Rhonefoot?”

“Why, yes, there is,” said Laird Cunningham of Barr.  “But why do you ask?  I thought a Sheriff would know everything without asking—­even an ornamental one on his way to the Premiership.”

“Oh, I heard the name,” said Gregory.  “It struck me as a curious one.”

So that evening there came over the river from the Waterfoot of the Rhone the sound of a voice calling.  Grace Allen sat thoughtfully looking out of the rose-hung window of the boathouse.  Her face was an oval of perfect curve, crowned with a mass of light brown hair, in which were red lights when the sun shone directly upon it.  Her skin was clear, pale as ivory, and even exertion hardly brought the latent under-flush of red to the surface.