Margaret had her two hundred pounds with her, and she promised to buy her “plenishing” during her visit to Glasgow.  In those days girls made their own trousseau, sewing into every garment solemn and tender hopes and joys.  Margaret thought that proper attention to this dear stitching as well as proper respect for her father’s memory, asked of her yet at least another year’s delay; and for the present Captain Thorkald thought it best not to urge her further.

Ronald received his sister very joyfully.  He had provided lodgings for her with their father’s old correspondent, Robert Gorie, a tea merchant in the Cowcaddens.  The Cowcaddens was then a very respectable street, and Margaret was quite pleased with her quarters.  She was not pleased with Ronald, however.  He avowed himself thoroughly disgusted with the law, and declared his intention of forfeiting his fee and joining his friend Walter Cashell in a manufacturing scheme.

Margaret could feel that he was all wrong, but she could not reason about a business of which she knew nothing, and Ronald took his own way.  But changing and bettering are two different things, and, though he was always talking of his “good luck” and his “good bargains”, Margaret was very uneasy.  Perhaps Robert Gorie was partly to blame for this; his pawky face and shrewd little eyes made visible dissents to all such boasts; nor did he scruple to say, “Guid luck needs guid elbowing, Ronald, an’ it is at the guid bargains I aye pause an’ ponder.”

The following winter was a restless, unhappy one; Ronald was either painfully elated or very dull; and, soon after the New Year, Walter Cashell fell into bad health, went to the West Indies, and left Ronald with the whole business to manage.  He soon now began to come to his sister, not only for advice, but for money.  Margaret believed at first that she was only supplying Walter’s sudden loss, but when her cash was all gone, and Ronald urged her to mortgage her rents she resolutely shut her ears to all his plausible promises, and refused to “throw more good money after bad.”

It was the first ill-blood between them, and it hurt Margaret sorely.  She was glad when the fine weather came, and she could escape to her island home, for Ronald was cool to her, and said cruel things of Captain Thorkald, for whose sake he declared his sister had refused to help him.

One day, at the end of the following August, when most of the towns-people—­men and women—­had gone to the moss to cut the winter’s peat, she saw Geordie Twatt coming toward the house.  Something about his appearance troubled her, and she went to the open door and stood waiting for him.

“What is it, Geordie?”

“I am bidden to tell thee, Margaret Sinclair, to be at the Stanes o’ Stennis to-night at eleven o’clock.”

“Who trysts me there, Geordie, at such an hour?”

“Thy brother; but thou’lt come—­yes, thou wilt.”