was now a great black pot a-swing above a blinking pale fire of
peats and fir-branches, and a couple of great tubs set close
together on stones which he had not seen before. There was, too, a
ripple of girls' laughter, which sent a strange stirring of
excitement along the nerves of the young man. He gathered his
books to move away; but on second thoughts, looking through the
long, swaying tendrils of the broom under which he sat, he
resolved to remain. After all, the girls might be as harmless as
his helper of yesterday.

"Yet it is most annoying," he said; "I had been quieter in James's
Court."

Still he smiled a little to himself, for the broom did not grow in
James's Court, nor the blackbirds flute their mellow whistle
there.

Loch Grannoch stretched away three miles to the south, basking in
alternate blue and white, as cloud and sky mirrored themselves
upon it. The first broad rush of the ling [Footnote: Common heath
(Erica tetralix).] was climbing the slopes of the Crae Hill above
--a pale lavender near the loch-side, deepening to crimson on the
dryer slopes where the heath-bells grew shorter and thicker
together. The wimpling lane slid as silently away from the
sleeping loch as though it were eloping and feared to awake an
angry parent. The whole range of hill and wood and water was
drenched in sunshine. Silence clothed it like a garment--save only
for the dark of the shadow under the bridge, from whence had come
that ring of girlish laughter which had jarred upon the nerves of
Ralph Peden.