By Right of Purchase. Bindloss Harold

and, if there was any way out of the difficulties that threatened her, it was his part to find it.

      He came up the rude steps hastily, a well-favoured young man of her own world, and almost her own age, which she felt was in some ways unfortunate then. As he seized both her hands, with a little resolute movement she drew them away from him.

      "No," she said a trifle sharply. "As I told you last time, that is all done with now. It was a little weak of me to see you, and you must not come here again."

      The colour faded in the young man's face, and he clenched his hands spasmodically.

      "Oh!" he said, with a catch in his breath, "you can't mean it, Carrie. In spite of what you told me, I had been trying to believe the thing was out of the question."

      There was pain in Carrie Denham's face, and a little bitter smile flickered into her eyes.

      "The thing one shrinks from most is generally the one that happens – unless one does something to make it impossible," she said.

      The man reddened, for, though he was pleasant to look at, a stalwart, open-faced Englishman, he was very young, and it was, perhaps, not his fault that there was a lack of stiffness in his composition. He was not one to grapple resolutely with an emergency, and Carrie Denham, who had once looked up to him, realised it then.

      "What could I do – what could anybody in my place do?" he said, with a little gesture that suggested desperation. "Stanley Crossthwaite is only sixty, and may live another twenty years. While he does, I'm something between his head keeper and a pensioner."

      "Isn't it a pity you didn't think of that earlier?"

      The man made as though he would have seized her hands again, but she drew back from him with a slight shiver of hopelessness running through her.

      "You can't blame me," he said. "Who could help falling in love with you? There was a time when I think you loved me, too."

      Carrie watched him with a quietness at which she herself marvelled. She had, at least, fancied she felt for him what he had protested he felt for her, but now there was a stirring of contempt in her. Her reason recognised that he was right, and there was nothing he could do; but, for all that, he had been her last faint hope, and he had failed her.

      "There is nothing to be gained by talking of that now," she said quietly.

      The man, who did not answer her, leaned upon the rails, gazing down into the ravine with his face awry, until at last he looked up again.

      "It's not that awful brute Aylmer?" he said hoarsely.

      "No. I could not have brought myself to that."

      "The farmer fellow? It's horrible, anyway, but I suppose one couldn't blame you – they, your father and Jimmy, made you."

      He straightened himself suddenly and moved along the path a pace or two. "It's an abominable thing that you should be driven to such a sacrifice, but you shall not make it. Can't you understand? It's out of the question. You can't make it. Is there nothing you can do?"

      The girl's face was colourless, and her lips were trembling, but her eyes were hard, for her contempt was growing stronger now. The man had asked her the question to which it seemed fitting that he alone should find an answer. She did not know what she had expected from him, and, since she had decided that the sacrifice must be made, she recognised that there was, in fact, nothing she could expect; but her strength had almost failed her. Had he suggested a desperate remedy, and insisted on it masterfully, she might have fled with him. Only it would have been necessary for him to compel her with an overwhelming forcefulness that was stronger than her will, and that was apparently too much to ask of him.

      "No," she said, with a quietness that was born of despair, "there is nothing. Fate is too strong for us, Reggie, and you must go back now. It would have been better had I never promised that I would see you. I should not have done it, but I wanted you to understand that I couldn't help myself."

      She held out a hand to him, and the man flushed as he seized it. Then he drew her towards him, but the girl shook him off with a strength that seemed equal to his own, and, though he scarcely saw her move, in another moment she stood a yard or two away from him. There was a spot of crimson in her cheek, and she was gasping a little.

      "Go now!" she said, and her voice had a faintly grating ring. "Since you cannot help me, you shall, at least, not make it harder than I can bear."

      He stood looking at her, slightly bewildered, irresolute, and half-ashamed, though he did not quite realise for the moment why he should feel so. Then, with a despairing gesture, he went down the steps without a word. Whilst Carrie Denham still leaned dejectedly on the terrace railing, Eveline Annersly, coming through the archway, caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure moving off through the trees.

      "Were you wise?" she asked the girl. "One has to be circumspect, you know."

      Carrie laughed bitterly.

      "I do not think there was any great risk. It is a very long while since young Lochinvar swam the Esk at Netherby. In fact, unless men have changed with the times, it is difficult to believe that he ever did."

      Mrs. Annersly glanced at her shrewdly, for she fancied she understood.

      "I'm not sure they have," she said. "There was a gentleman in the ballad who said nothing at all, and presumably did nothing, too; but I don't know that I'm so very sorry for you. Reggie Urmston is a nice boy, but I imagine that is about all that could be said of him."

      She stopped a moment, and looked at the girl with a little twinkle in her eyes. "I almost think, my dear, that if you had shown the Canadian half the favour you have wasted on Reggie, he would, even in these degenerate days, have carried you off, in spite of all the Denhams could do to prevent him."

      Then for the first time Carrie Denham flushed crimson as she heard the thought she had not permitted herself to put into words. The impression sank in, and she afterwards recalled it. She, however, said nothing in comment, and the two went back silently through the archway to the lawn.

      The rest of the afternoon seemed very long to Carrie; but it dragged itself away, and at last she slipped out of the house as the still night was closing down. A full moon had just lifted itself above the ridge of moor. As she flitted along the terrace, the pale, silvery light was creeping across the old grey house. It rose above her, a pile of rudely hewn and weathered stone, not beautiful, for time itself could not make it that with its creeping mosses, houseleek, and lichens, but stamped with a certain rugged stateliness, and the girl, who had much else to think of, felt its influence.

      The pride of family was strong in her, and she remembered what kind of men those were who had built themselves that home in the days of feud and foray. They, at least, had not shrunk from the harder things of life, and she, who sprang from them, could emulate their courage. It seemed that Barrock-holme demanded a sacrifice, and she must make it. Then a little flush crept to her face as she remembered the part her father and Jimmy played. It was a degenerate and paltry one, to which she felt the very stranger to whom they were willing to sell her would never have stooped. He was not of her world, a man, so far as she knew, of low degree, one who had held the plough; but there were, at least, signs of strength and pride in him.

      She stopped for just a moment with a little catching of her breath as she saw him, a dim figure in the shadow of the firs beyond the wall that lay in sharp, black outline upon the dewy lawn. Then she went on again, nerving herself for what must be borne. When he had reached the foot of the terrace steps, he stood waiting her there with his hat in his hand. It was not exactly what Jimmy Denham or even Reggie Urmston would have done in a similar case, but this quaint Westerner had seen fit to make use of the formal courtesy of sixty years ago, and, what was most curious, farmer as he was, it did not appear ridiculous in him.

      "It was," he said, "very good of you to come, though I was 'most afraid to hope that you would keep your promise."

      "Wouldn't such a thing imply an obligation?'

      "Yes" – and Leland made a little gesture – "I think it would with you. Still, you see, the fact that you made that promise was in one way an astonishing thing to me."

      He stopped, and stood for a moment