It was a long way across, and evidently Gregory Jeffray was not a good
oarsman, for it was dark when Grace Allen went indoors to her aunts. Her
heart was bounding within her. Her bosom rose and fell as she breathed
quickly and silently through her parted red lips. There was a new thing
in her eye.

Every evening thereafter, through all that glorious height of midsummer,
there came a crying at the Waterfoot; and every evening Grace Allen went
over to the edge of the Rhone wood to answer it. There the boat lay
moored to a stone upon the turf, while Gregory and she walked upon the
flowery forest carpet, and the dry leaves watched and clashed and
muttered above them as the gloaming fell. These were days of rapture,
each a doorway into yet fuller and more perfect joy.

Over at the Waterfoot the copses grew close. The green turf was velvet
underfoot. The blackbirds fluted in the hazels there. None of them
listened to the voice of Gregory Jeffray, or cared for what he said to
Grace Allen when she went nightly to meet him over the Black Water.

She rowed back alone, the simple soul that was in her forwandered and
mazed with excess of joy. As she set the boat to the shore and came up
the bank bearing the oars which were her wings into the world of love
under the green alders, the light in the west, lingering clear and pure
and cold, shone upon her and added radiances to her eyes.

But Aunt Annie watched her with silent pain. Barbara from her bed spoke
sharp and cruel words which Grace Allen listened to not at all.

For as soon as the morning shone bright over the hills and ran on
tip-toe up the sparkling ripples of the loch, she looked across the