listening to the birds--the same songs Burns used to hear. I seem to
know every step of the way, all the fields in Mossgiel, and every tree
in the woods of Ballochmyle. Just before he died, he tried to sing,--oh,
it was so painful to hear his dear, trembling voice,--and it was "The
Bonnie Lass o' Ballochmyle." If it is not very far, will you take me
one day, when you have time, Uncle Abel, to see Mauchline and Mossgiel
and Ballochmyle?'

She looked at him fearlessly as she made her request, and her courage
pleased him.

'We'll see. Perhaps at the Fair, when fares are cheap. But it will only
be to please you; I never want to see the place again.'

'Oh, is not that very strange, Uncle Abel, that papa and you should
think of it so differently? He loved it all so much, and he always said,
when we were rich, we should come, he and I together, to Scotland.'

'He was glad enough to turn his back on it, anyhow. If he had stayed in
Glasgow, and attended to business, he might have been a rich man,' said
he incautiously.

'_You_ are not rich, though you have done so,' said Gladys quickly,
looking at him with her young, fearless eyes. 'I think papa was better
off than you, because he could always be in the country, and not here.'

The undisguised contempt on the girl's face as she took in her
surroundings rather nettled the old man, and he gave her a snappish
answer, then picked himself up, and went off to his warehouse.