"I wud hae ye promise to merry me, Kirsty, come the time," says the young Francie Gordon to Kirsty; "and that ye ken as well as I du mysel!" Kirsty of Corbyknowe leads a simple life among the hills of Scotland, raised by a farming family and blessed with the patient wisdom of the country folk. Frank Gordon is of higher blood, his father having risen to military distinction -- as his widowed mother reminds him, keeping him from his lower-born childhood friend. Yet Frank knows his father would have approved: for Kirsty's father was his own father's best friend. George MacDonald (1824-1905), best known for "At the Back of the North Wind," paints the rolling Scottish landscape and its inhabitants with both beauty and deep understanding, in "Heather and Snow."