But she had presumed just a hair-breadth too far on Ralph’s gentleness.  He snatched the lilac sunbonnet out of her hands, tearing, in his haste, one of the strings off, and leaving it in Winsome’s hand.  Then he kissed it once and twice outside where the sun shone on it, and inside where it had rested on her head.  “You have torn it,” she said complainlngly, yet without anger.

“I am very glad,” said Ralph Peden, coming nearer to her with a light in his eye that she had never seen before.

Winsome dropped the string, snatched up the bonnet, and fled up the hill as trippingly as a young doe towards the herd’s cottage.  At the top of the fell she paused a moment with her hand on her side, as if out of breath.  Ralph Peden was still holding the torn bonnet-string in his hand.

He held it up, hanging loose like a pennon from his hand.  She could hear the words come clear up the hill: 

“I’m very—­glad—­that—­I—­tore—­it, and I will come and—­see—­ your—­grandmother!”

“Of all the—­” Winsome stopped for want of words, speaking to herself as she turned away up the hill—­“of all the insolent and disagreeable—­”

She did not finish her sentence, as she adjusted the outraged sunbonnet on her curls, tucking the remaining string carefully within the crown; but as she turned again to look, Ralph Peden was calmly folding tip the string and putting it in a book.

“I shall never speak to him again as long as I live,” she said, compressing her lips so that a dimple that Ralph had never seen came out on the other side.  This, of course, closed the record in the case.  Yet in a little while she added thoughtfully:  “But he is very handsome, and I think he will keep his shoulders back now.  Not, of course, that it matters, for I am never to speak to him any more!”

John Scott’s dogs were by this time leaping upon her, and that worthy shepherd was coming along a steep slope upon the edges of his boot-soles in the miraculous manner, which is peculiar to herds, as if he were walking on the turnpike.

Winsome turned for the last time.  Against the broad, dark sapphire expanse of the loch, just where the great march dyke stepped off to bathe in the summer water, she saw something black which waved a hand and sprang over lightly.

Winsome sighed, and said a little wistfully yet not sadly: 

“Who would have thought it of him?  It just shows!” she said.  All which is a warning to maids that the meekest worm may turn.

CHAPTER XIV.

Captain Agnew Greatorix.