CHAPTER XXVI.
TOMMY REPENTS, AND IS NONE THE WORSE FOR IT Mr.McLean wrote a few reassuring words to Miss Ailie, and having told Gavinia to give the note to her walked quietly out of the house; he was coming back after he had visited Miss Kitty's grave.

Gavinia, however, did not knew this, and having delivered the note she returned dolefully to the kitchen to say to Tommy, "His letter maun have been as thraun as himsel', for as soon as she read it, down she plumped on her knees again." But Tommy was not in the kitchen; he was on the garden-wall watching Miss Ailie's persecutor.
"Would it no be easier to watch him frae the gate ?" suggested Gavinia, who had not the true detective instinct.
Tommy disregarded her womanlike question; a great change had come over him since she went upstairs; his bead now wobbled on his shoulders like a little balloon that wanted to cut its connection with earth and soar.
"What makes you look so queer ?" cried the startled maid.

"I thought you was converted." "So I am," he shouted, "I'm more converted than ever, and yet I can do it just the same! Gavinia, I've found a wy!" He was hurrying off on Mr.McLean's trail, but turned to say, "Gavinia, do you ken wha that man is ?" "Ower weel I ken," she answered, "it's Mr.McLean." "McLean!" he echoed scornfully, "ay, I've heard that's one of the names he goes by, but hearken, and I'll tell you wha he really is.

That's the scoundrel Stroke!" No wonder Gavinia was flabbergasted.

"Wha are you then ?" she cried.
"I'm the Champion of Dames," he replied loftily, and before she had recovered from this he was stalking Mr.McLean in the cemetery.
Miss Kitty sleeps in a beautiful hollow called the Basin, but the stone put up to her memory hardly marks the spot now, for with a score of others it was blown on its face by the wind that uprooted so many trees in the Den, and as it fell it lies.