extinct for the loss of him, at the worst; and the Squire wouldn’t grudge him a few months’ diversion and a peep at the wide world.  Far from it; he’d send him some money, and why not?  He (Dennis) was a bit of a favourite for his mother’s sake, and the Squire had a fine heart.  The real difficulty was that it would be at least a month before the Squire could get a letter and Dennis could get his money; but if we couldn’t keep our heads above water for a month we’d small chance of pushing our way in the world.

It is needless to say that I was willing to fall in with Dennis O’Moore’s plans, being only too thankful for such companions in my wanderings.  I said so, and added that what little money I had was to be regarded as a common purse so long as it lasted.

When Alister was appealed to, he cast in his lot with no less willingness, but it seemed that he must first look up a relation of his mother’s, who lived in Halifax, and to whom his mother had given him a letter of introduction.  Alister had never told us his history, and of course we had not asked for it; but on this occasion some of it crept out.  His father had been the minister of a country parish in Scotland, but he had died young, and Alister had been reared in poverty.  Dennis and I gathered that he had well-to-do relatives on his father’s side, but, as Dennis said, “more kinship than kindness about them.”  “Though I wouldn’t wonder if the widow herself had a touch of stiff-neckedness in her,” he added.

However that might be, Alister held with his mother, of course, and he said little enough about his paternal relations, except one, whom he described as “a guid man, and verra canny, but hard on the failings of the young.”  What youthful failings in our comrade had helped to snap the ties of home we did not know, but we knew enough of Alister by this time to feel sure they could not have been very unpardonable.

It was not difficult to see that it was under the sting of this man’s reproaches that the lad had taken his fate into his own hands.

“I’m not blaming him,” said Alister in impartial tones; and then he added, with a flash of his eyes, “but I’ll no be indebted to him!”

We had returned to the town, and were strolling up the shady side of one of the clean wooden streets, when a strange figure came down it with a swinging gait, at a leisurely pace.  She (for, after a moment’s hesitation, we decided that it was a woman) was of gipsy colouring, but not of gipsy beauty.  Her black hair was in a loose knot on her back, she wore a curious skull-cap of black cloth embroidered with beads, a short cloth skirt, a pair of old trousers tucked into leather socks, a small blanket with striped ends folded cunningly over her shoulders, and on her breast a gold cross about twice as large as the one concealed beneath the Irish boy’s shirt.  And I looked at her with a curious feeling that my dreams were coming true.  Dark—­high-cheeked—­a blanket—­and (unless the eyes with which I gazed almost reverentially at the dirty leather socks deceived me) moccasins—­she was, she must be, a squaw!