but also to see you, who have not been at all kind to me,"
answered Ralph.

"And pray, Master Ralph Peden, how have I not been kind to you?"
said Winsome with dignity, giving him the full benefit of a pair
of apparently reproachful eyes across the fir-branch.

Now Ralph had strange impulses, and, like Winsome, certainly did
not talk by rule.

"I do wish," he said complainingly, with his head a little to one
side, "that you would only look at me with one eye at a time. Two
like that are too much for a man."

This is that same Ralph Peden whose opinions on woman were written
in a lost note-book which at this present moment is--we shall not
say where.





CHAPTER XXVI.

SUCH SWEET PERIL.


Winsome looked away down the glen, and strove to harden her face
into a superhuman indignation.