refusal of each "good match," "I will marry a
better man still, Lady Betty."

After four years, Lady Betty, who was
a wilful old lady, and whose patience was
exhausted, quarrelled with her about it, and before
she recovered her temper she took ill and died
and Ailsie found herself one day sad and solitary
in Paris, without the protection of her kind
indulgent friend.

Tears would not mend the matter now, no
would they alter the will which Lady Betty had
left behind her, the conditions of which were
fair enough, said Ailsie's suitors, when the
contents of the important document became known.
One year had the impatient old lady given her
chosen heiress, in the space of which time to
become a wife. And if at the end of that year
she was still found to be a spinster, not a penny
had she, but might go back to the cottage at
the top of the lonan, and take with her her
father and mother to work for them as before
to milk her cows, and feed her hens, and
persuade herself, if she liked, that her wit, and her
diamonds, and her beauty, and her lovers, had
all had their existence in a tantalizing dream,
which had visited her between roosting-time in
the evening and cock-crow of a churning morning.
But, should she marry before the year
was out, bestowing on her husband the name of
MacQuillan, then would the shade of Lady
Betty be appeased, and the Indian thousands
and the Irish rentals, together with the old
ancestral halls of Castle Craigie, would all
belong to Ailsie and the fortunate possessor of her
wealthy little hand.

Very fair conditions, said the suitors, and
proposals poured in on Ailsie. But lo and
behold! the flinty-hearted damsel proved as
obstinate as ever; and, in the midst of wonderment
and disappointment, having attained the age of
twenty-one, and being altogether her own mistress,
she wrote to her retainers at Castle Craigie
to announce her arrival there upon a certain
summer day. Great was the glory of Mary
MacQuillan when she received a letter from her
daughter, desiring that her father and mother
should at once take up their abode at the castle,
being there to receive her at her arrival. Great,
indeed, was her triumph when Miss O'Trimmins
sat making her a gown of brown velvet, and a
lace cap with lappets, in which to meet her
child, and when Jamie's blue coat with the
bright gold buttons came home.

Ailsie brought a whole horde of foreigners
with her, brilliant ladies of rank, who called her
pet and darling in broken English—and needy
marquises—and counts with slender means, who
were nevertheless very magnificent persons,
and still hoped to win the Irish charmer.
Balls, plays, and sports of all kinds went
on at the Castle, and those of the gentry-folks
who, from curiosity, or a better feeling, came
to visit Ailsie, found her in the midst of a roomful
of glittering company, dressed in a blue
satin sacque and pearl earrings, with her hair
coming into her eyes in very bewitching little
tendril curls, and seated between Mary in the
brown velvet and lappets, and Jamie in the
new coat with the buttons. They went away
saying she was wonderful indeed, considering,
delightfully odd and pretty, and they wondered
which of those flaunting foreigners she was
going to marry in the end. Meantime the
year was flying away, and old neighbours of her
mother's began to shake their heads over the
fire, of nights, and to say that if Ailsie did not
take care, she might be a penniless lass yet.

Things were in this position, when, one fine
morning, Miss MacQuillan driving out with
some of her grand friends, thought proper to
stop at the door of Hughie Devnish's
schoolhouse. The schoolmaster turned red and then
pale as he saw Ailsie's feathers coming nodding
in to him through the doorway, followed by a
brilliant party of grandees, and two footmen
dragging a huge parcel of presents for his girls
and boys. Ailsie coolly set her ladies and
gentlemen unpacking the parcel and distributing
its contents, whilst she questioned the
schoolmaster upon many subjects with the air of a
little duchess, whose humour it was to make
inquiries, and who never, certainly, had seen
that place, much less conversed with that person
before.

Hughie endured her whim with proud
patience, till, just before she left him, on opening
his desk to restore a book to its place, she
demanded to see a certain little dark thing which
was peeping out from under some papers. Then,
with evident annoyance, he produced a little
black kid shoe. So the story runs.

"Why, it's only a slipper!" said Ailsie, turning
it about and looking at it just as the Widow
Devnish had detected Hughie in doing. "What
an odd thing to keep a shoe in a desk! But it
looked like the cover of a book. Good morning."

As the party drove off, it is said that one of
the gentlemen remarked that the schoolmaster
was a fine-looking intelligent fellow, fit for a
better station than that which he filled. And it
is further said that next day Ailsie made a
present to this gentleman of a snuff-box worth a
hundred guineas.

When Ailsie went to her room on her return
home on this August afternoon, she walked over
to a handsome gold casket which stood upon her
table, unlocked it, and took out a little kid slipper
which looked as if she must have stolen it out
of Hughie' s desk. In the sole of it was pinned
a slip of paper, on which were scrawled, in a
rude hand, the words:

"If ever I forget you, Hughie Devnish, to
marry a fine gentleman, may the Lord turn my
gran' gowns into Rags agen, and the bit that 1
ate into Sand in my mouth."

"And the Lord's goin' to do it very fast,"
said Ailsie, falling back into her old way of talking,
as she looked at this specimen of her old
way of writing, " if I do not look to 't very soon,
an' be keepin' my word! An' God knows, Hughie
Devnish," she added, as she locked her box again
with a sharp snap, "you're more of a gentleman
any day the sun rises on you, than, ever poor
Ailsie 'll be of a lady!"