driven you to exile and the old kitchen? Who can tell from what sad seed, and planted by what tragic agency, may have sprung that thicket of impenetrable pride that walled you from your fellows as the pine-trees wall the farm?
Nobody, at least in Kiteroa; and perhaps it is as well. It is good at times that curiosity should go ungratified. Miss Kirkcaldie succeeded in remaining a problem to the end. Three years to the very day, after she had drifted into the farm, she drifted away from it again, as suddenly and unexplainingly as she had come. Nobody ever heard where she went to, or anything more about her. The patient bullocks took the boxes and piano-case down the hill again, the cold ashes were swept up from the unrequired hearth, the music was gone, and the old kitchen was shut up once more.
Not for very long this time, however. One scorching day, the summer following Miss Kirkcaldie’s departure, it so happened that a couple of young men went strolling out upon the promontory, to get a view of the great Point opposite. The heat gave way suddenly to a violent storm, and they ran for shelter to the farm, which received them hospitably—so hospitably, indeed, that they stayed on there for a week, delighted with their luck. The Callenders, too, were delighted in their turn. Their guests, it appeared, were art-students from town, spending their holiday in a sketching-trip along the coast; and very lively, companionable fellows they proved themselves. It was long since the Callenders had laughed so much—probably, indeed, they had never before found life half so
