finest of her lobsters.

He put it in his basket.

Then he felt in the pocket of his jacket and brought out a
sixpenny-piece.

"You must let me pay for it," he said.

Hannah took the sixpence and held it a moment, flushing with true
Highland pride.

"I'll no be selling the fush for money," she said.

Something in the girl's speech went straight to the young man's
heart. He handed her half a crown. Whistling lightly, he strode
off up the side of the burn. Hannah stood gazing after him
spell-bound. She was aroused from her reverie by an angry voice
calling her name.

"Hannah, Hannah," cried the voice, "come away ben; are ye daft,
lass, that ye stand there keeking at a McWhinus?"

Then Hannah realised what she had done.

She had spoken with a McWhinus, a thing that no McShamus had done
for a hundred and fifty years. For nearly two centuries the
McShamuses and the McWhinuses, albeit both dwellers in the Glen,
had been torn asunder by one of those painful divisions by which
the life of the Scotch people is broken into fragments.