respected, but also in some measure shared his family pride. He felt that
it would be a sin to desert him, and for his own private pleasure crumble
the unselfish life-work of so many years to pieces. Then also, beautiful
as Maggie was in her cot at Pittenloch, she would be sadly out of place in
the splendid rooms at Meriton. Sweet, intoxicatingly sweet, the cup which
he had been drinking, but he felt that he must put it away from his own,
and also from Maggie's lips. It would be fatal to the welfare of both.

Thinking such thoughts, he finally went back to the cottage. It was about
ten o'clock; Maggie's house work was all "redd up;" and she was standing
at her wheel spinning, when Allan's shadow fell across the sanded floor,
and she turned to see him standing watching her.

"You are hame soon, sir. Is a' well wi' you?"

"No, Maggie, all is not well. If all had been well, I had never been in
Pittenloch." She stopped her wheel and stood looking at him. Then he
plunged at once into the story, which he had determined to tell her. "I
had a quarrel with my father and I left home. He does not know where I
am."

"You hae done very wrang I'm fearing, sir. He'll hae been a gude fayther
to you?"

"Yes, very good. He has given me love, education, travel, leisure, wealth,
my own way, in all things but one."

"Then, you be to call yoursel' a bad son. I didna think it o' you, sir."

"But, Maggie, that one thing includes all my future life. If I obey him, I