'Ronald,' she said, with a bit of a smile, 'when you told me of that girl in the Highlands that you knew, you said you—you had never said anything to her that would lead her to imagine you were thinking of her. But you wrote her a letter.'
'What?'
'Yes; and she saw it,' Meenie continued; but with downcast eyes. 'It was not meant for her to see; but she saw it. It was some verses—very pretty they were—but—but rather daring—considering that——'
'Bless me,' he exclaimed, 'did you see that?'
She nodded. And then his mind went swiftly back to that period.
'Meenie, that was the time you were angry with me.'
She looked up.
'And yet not so very angry, Ronald.'
'But Love from Love towards school with hoary looks.' Not always. Five miles an hour or so was the pace at which Ronald sped over to Pollokshaws: and very much astonished was the nervous little Mr. Weems over the new-found and anxious energy of his quondam pupil. Ronald remained all day there, and, indeed, did not leave the cottage until it was very late. As he walked back into the town all the world around him lay black and silent; no stars were visible; no crescent moon; nor any dim outline of cloud; but the dusky heavens were flushed with the red fires of the ironworks, as the flames shot fiercely up, and sent their sullen splendour across the startled night. And that, it may have occurred to him, was as the lurid glare that had lit up his own life for a while, until the fires had gone down, and the world grown sombre and dead; but surely there was a clear dawn about to break by and by in the east—clear and silvery and luminous—like the first glow of the morn along the Clebrig slopes.
CHAPTER VII.