Title: The Orphans of Glen Elder
Author: Robertson, Margaret M. (Margaret Murray), 1821-1897
Language: English
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The Orphans of Glen Elder, by Margaret Murray Robertson.



CHAPTER ONE.

AUNT JANET'S VISIT.

"Up to the fifth landing, and then straight on.  You canna miss the
door."

For a moment the person thus addressed stood gazing up into the darkness
of the narrow staircase, and then turned wearily to the steep ascent.
No wonder she was weary; for at the dawn of that long August day, now
closing so dimly over the smoky town, her feet had pressed the purple
heather on the hills that skirt the little village of Kirklands.  A
neighbouring farmer had driven her part of the way, but she had walked
since then seven-and-twenty miles of the distance that lay between her
and her home.

But it was not weariness alone that deepened the shadow on her brow as
she passed slowly upwards.  Uncertainty with regard to the welfare of
dear friends had long been taking the form of anxious fears; and now her
fears were rapidly changing into a certainty of evil.  Her heart
sickened within her as she breathed the hot, stifling air; for she knew
that her only brother's orphan children had breathed no other air than
that during the long, hot weeks of summer.

At length she reached the door to which she had been directed; and, as
she stood for a moment before it, the prayer that had often risen in her
heart that day, burst, in strong, brief words, from her lips.

There was no sound in the room, and it was some time before her eyes
became accustomed to the dim light around her.  Then the glimpse she
caught, through the half-open door, of one or two familiar objects,--the
desk which had been her father's, and the high-backed chair of carved
oak in which her mother used to sit so many, many years ago,--assured
her that she had reached her journey's end.

On a low bed, just opposite the door through which she gazed, lay a boy,
apparently about ten years of age.  His face was pale and thin, and he
moved his head uneasily on his pillow, as though very weary or in pain.
For a time all sense of fatigue was forgotten by the traveller, so
occupied was she in tracing in that fair little face a resemblance to
one dearly beloved in former years--her only brother, and the father of
the child.

Suddenly he raised himself up; and, leaning his head upon his hand,
spoke to some one in another part of the room.

"Oh me! oh me!" he said faintly; "the time seems so long!  Surely she
must be coming now."

"It's Saturday night, you ken," said a soft voice, in reply.  "She can't
be home quite so soon to-night.  But the shadow of the speir has got
round to the yew-tree at the gate, and it won't be long now."

The little head sank back on the pillow again, and there was a pause.
"Oh me!" he murmured again, "it seems so long!  I wish it was all at an
end."

"What do you wish was at an end?" said the same low voice again.

"All these long days and my mother's going out when she's not able to
go, and you sewing so busy all the day, and me waiting, waiting, never
to be well again.  Oh, Lily, I wish I was dead."

There was the sound of a light step on the floor, and a little girl's
grave, pale face bent over the boy.

"Whisht, Archie!" said she, gravely, as she smoothed the pillow and
placed his restless head in a more easy posture.  "Do you not ken it's
wrong for you to say the like of that?  It's an awful thing to die,
Archie."

"Well, if it's wrong to be weary of lying here, I can't help it," said
the child; "but it's surely not wrong to wish to die and go to heaven,
yon bonny place!"

"But it is wrong not to be willing to live, and suffer too, if it be
God's will," said his sister, earnestly.  "And what would _we_ do if you
were to die, Archie, my mother and me?"

"I am sure you could do far better than you can do now.  You wouldn't
need to bide here longer.  You could go to Glen Elder to Aunt Janet, you
and my mother.  But I'll never see Glen Elder, nor Aunt Janet, nor
anything but these dark walls and yon bit of the kirk-yard."

"Whisht, Archie," said his sister, soothingly.  "Aunt Janet has gone
from Glen Elder, and she's maybe as ill off as any of us.  I doubt none
of us will ever go there again.  But we won't think of such sad things
now.  Lie still, and I'll sing to you till my mother comes home."

She drew a low stool to the side of the bed, and, laying her head down
on the pillow beside him, she sang, in a voice low and soft but clear as
a skylark's, the sweetest of all the sweet Psalmist's holy songs.  It
must have been a weary day for her too.  She got through the first two
verses well; but as she began, "Yea, though I walk through death's dark
vale," her eyes closed, and her voice died away into a murmur, and then
ceased.  Her brother lay quite still, too; nor did either of them move
when the traveller went forward into the room.

Many sad and some bitter thoughts were in her heart, as she stood gazing
upon them in the deepening twilight.  She thought of the time when her
only brother, many years younger than herself, had been committed to her
care by her dying mother.  She thought of the love they had borne each
other in the years that followed; how the boy had come to her for
sympathy in his childish joys and sorrows; how he had sought her
counsel, and guided himself by it, in riper years.  She recalled with
sadness the untoward events which had interfered to separate him from
her and from his early home as he advanced to manhood.  Things had not
gone well with him in the last years of his life, and he sank under a
burden of care too heavy to be borne by one of his sensitive nature.
Now he was dead, and she grieved to think that she, his sister, in her
old age of poverty, could not offer a home to his widow and orphan
children.

The youth and middle age of Mrs Blair had been more free from trial
than is the common lot; but the last few years had been years of great
vicissitude.  She was now a widow and childless; for though it might be
that her youngest son was still alive, she did not know that he was; and
his life had been the cause of more sorrow than the death of all her
other children had been.

She had been involved in the pecuniary troubles that had borne so
heavily upon her brother, and when old age was drawing near she found
herself under the necessity of leaving Glen Elder, the home where her
life had been passed, to seek a humbler shelter.  Since then she had
lived content with humble means, as far as she herself was concerned,
but anxious often for the sake of those whom she loved and longed to
befriend.  She had known they must be poor, but she had not heard of
their poverty from themselves.  They resided in a remote and thinly
peopled district in Scotland, where the means of communication were few
and difficult.  Nothing but vague reports had reached her.  She had
hoped against hope till the time came when she could set her fears at
rest, or know the worst, by seeing them herself.  Now, standing in the
bare room, in the midst of many marks of want and sickness, it grieved
her bitterly to feel how little she could do to help them.

"God help them!" she said aloud; and her voice awoke the sleeper before
her.  For an instant the startled girl stood gazing at the stranger;
then, advancing timidly, she held out both hands, exclaiming:

"Aunt Janet!"

"Yes, it is Aunt Janet," said Mrs Blair, clasping her in her arms; "if
indeed this can be the little Lily I used to like so well to see at Glen
Elder.  You are taller than my little lassie was," she added, bending
back the fair little face and kissing it fondly.  "But this is my wee
Lily's face; I should know it anywhere."

"Oh, Aunt Janet," cried the child, bursting into tears; "I am so glad
you are come!  We have needed you so much!"

Mrs Blair sat down on the bed, still holding the child in her arms.
Poor Lilias!  Tears must have been long kept back, her aunt thought, for
she seemed to have no power to check her sobs, now that they had found
way.  Half chiding, half soothing her with tender words, she held her
firmly till she grew calm again.

In a little while the weary child raised herself up, and said:

"Don't be vexed with me, Aunt Janet.  I don't often cry like that; but I
am so glad you have come.  We have needed you sorely; and I was sure you
would come, if you only knew."

Mrs Blair would not grieve her by telling her how little she could do
for them now that she had come; but she still held her in her arms, as
she bent down to kiss the little lad, who was gazing, half in wonder,
half in fear, at the sight of his sister's tears; and as she got a
better view of his thin pale face, she resolved that, if it were
possible, he at least should be removed from the close, unhealthy
atmosphere of his present home.

"You must be weary, aunt," said Lilias, at last, withdrawing herself
from her arms, and untying the strings of her bonnet, which had not yet
been removed.  "Come and rest here in the armchair till mother comes
home.  Oh, she will be so glad!"

Mrs Blair suffered herself to be led to the chair which had been her
mother's; and, as she rested in it, she watched with much interest the
movements of the little girl.  In a few minutes there was a fire on the
hearth, and warm water prepared, and then, kneeling down, she bathed the
hands and face and weary feet of her aunt.  Mrs Blair felt a strange
sweet pleasure in thus being waited on by the child.  Many months had
passed since she had looked on one united to her by the ties of blood;
and now her heart was full as she gazed on the children of her brother.
There was something inexpressibly grateful to her in the look of content
that was coming into the grave, wistful eyes of the little lad, and in
the caressing touch of Lily's hand.  In the interest with which she
watched the little girl as she went about intent on household cares, she
well-nigh forgot her own weariness and her many causes of anxiety.
There was something so womanly, yet so childish, in her quiet ways,
something so winning in the grave smile that now and then played about
her mouth, that her aunt was quite beguiled from her sad thoughts.  In a
little while Lily went to the door, and listened for her mother's
returning footsteps.

"I wonder what can be keeping her so late?" she said, as she returned.
"This is not a busy time, and she said that she would be early home.
Sometimes she is very late on Saturday night."

Once more she went to the head of the stairs to listen; and then,
returning, she sat herself on a stool at her aunt's feet.

"And so you are very glad to see me, Lily?" said Mrs Blair, smiling
upon the child's upturned face.

The bright smile with which the girl answered faded quickly as her aunt
continued:

"And you are very poor now, are you?"

"Yes, we are poor; and, yet, not so very poor, either.  We have had some
work to do, my mother and I; and we have never been a whole day without
food.  If Archie were only well again!  That's our worst trouble, now.
And mother, too, though she won't own to being ill, often gets very
weary.  But now that you are come, all will be well again."

"And maybe you'll take us all home to Glen Elder for a wee while, as you
used to do," said Archie, speaking for the first time since his aunt's
coming.

"Archie so pines for the country," said Lilias; "and we can hardly make
ourselves believe that you live anywhere but at Glen Elder."

"My home now is very unlike Glen Elder," said Mrs Blair, sadly.  "But
there is fresh air there, and there are bonny heather hills; so cheer
up, Archie, laddie; it will go hard with me if I canna get you to
Kirklands for a while at least, and you'll be strong and well before
winter yet."

The boy smiled sadly enough, and the tears started in his eyes; but he
did not answer.

"Archie is thinking that, maybe, he'll never be well again," said his
sister.  "The doctor says he may be a cripple all his life."

This was a new and unexpected sorrow to Mrs Blair; and her countenance
expressed the dismay she felt, as she questioned them about it.

"It was the fever.  Archie was ill with the fever all the winter; and
when the spring came he didn't get strong again, as we had hoped, and
the disease settled in his knee.  The doctor said if he could have got
away into the country he might have grown strong again.  And maybe it's
not too late yet," added the little girl, eagerly.  "I'm sure the very
sight of the hills, these bonny summer days, might make one strong and
well."

"Well, he'll get a sight of the hills before very long, I trust; and I
don't despair of seeing him strong and well yet," said Mrs Blair,
hopefully; and the children, reassured by her cheerful words, smiled
brightly to each other, as they thought of the happy days in store for
them.

Death had visited the homes of both since Mrs Blair and her
sister-in-law met last, and to both the meeting was a sad one.  Lilias'
mother was scarcely more calm than Lilias had been, as she threw herself
into the arms of her long-tried friend.  Her words of welcome were few;
but the earnest tearful gaze that she fixed upon her sister's face told
all that her quivering lips refused to utter.

When the first excitement of their meeting was over, Mrs Blair was
shocked to observe the change which grief and care had made in her
sister's face and form.  She looked many years older than when she had
last seen her.  There was not a trace of colour on her cheek or lip, and
her whole appearance indicated extreme weariness and languor.  Little
was said of the exertions and privations of the last few months; but
that these must have been severe and many was to Mrs Blair only too
evident.  The food placed upon the table was of the simplest and
cheapest kind, and of a quality little calculated to tempt the appetite
of an invalid; and she noticed with pain that it was scarcely tasted
either by the sick boy or his mother.

"You are not well to-night, mother," said Lilias, looking anxiously at
her as she put aside the untasted food.

"Yes, dear, I am as well as usual; but I am tired.  The night is close
and sultry, and the walk has tired me more than usual.  I have not hard
work now," she added, turning to Mrs Blair.  "This is not a busy time,
and my employer is very considerate; but her place of business is quite
at the other end of the town, and it's not so easy walking two or three
miles on the pavements as it used to be among the hills at home."

"I fear you carry a heavier heart than you used to do in those days,"
said Mrs Blair, sadly.  "But are you not trying your strength more than
you ought with these long walks?"

Mrs Elder might have replied that she had no choice between these long
walks and utter destitution for herself and her children; but she said,
cheerfully, that it was only since the weather had become so warm that
she had found the walk at all beyond her strength, and the hot weather
would soon be over now.

"It's the country air mother wants, as well as me," said Archie; and the
gaze which the weary mother turned upon her sister was as full of
wistful longing as the little lad's had been.  After a little pause, she
said:

"Sometimes I think it would be great happiness to get away to some quiet
country place, where I might earn enough to support myself and them.
The din and dust of this noisy town are almost too much for me,
sometimes; and I am not so strong as I once was.  I think it would give
me new life to breathe the air of the hills again.  But if such is not
God's will, we must even be content to bide here till the end comes."
And she sighed heavily.

"Whisht, Ellen, woman," said her sister; "don't speak in such a hopeless
voice as that.  Whatever comes, God sends; and what He sends to His own
He sends in love, not in anger.  He has not left you to doubt that,
surely?"

"Oh, no; I am sure of that.  I have seen that it has been in love that
He has dealt with us hitherto."  And in a moment she added, a bright
smile lighting up her pale face as she spoke:

"And I think I can count on a place prepared for me at last by my
Saviour; but, for my children's sakes, I would like to wait a while.  I
would like to take them with me when I go."

"It may be that one of them will get there before you," said her sister.
"He knows best, and will send what is best for His own."

"Yes, I know it," said Mrs Elder, in a startled voice, as she turned to
look at the pale face of her boy, now almost death-like in the quietness
of sleep.  The silence was long and tearful; and then she added, as if
unconscious of the presence of another:

"So that we are all guided safely to His rest at last, it matters little
though the way be rough.  `I will trust, and not be afraid.'"

Long after the tired children slept, the sisters sat conversing about
many things.  Not about the future.  Firm as was their trust in God, the
future seemed dark indeed, and each shrank from paining the other by
speaking her fears aloud.  Of her husband Mrs Elder spoke with
thankfulness and joy, though with many tears.  He had known and loved
the Saviour, and had died rejoicing in His salvation.  She had prayed
that God would give her submission to His will as the end drew near;--
and He had given her not only submission, but blessed peace; and no
trouble, however heavy, should make her distrust His love again.

Had her husband been cut off in the midst of his days, without warning,
she must have believed that it was well with him now.  But, in the
memory of the time before his death, the blessedness of his present
state seemed less a matter of faith than of sure and certain knowledge.
There could be no gloom, either in the past or the future, so thick but
the light of that blessed assurance might penetrate it.  In the darkest
hours that had fallen on her since then (and some hours had been dark
indeed), it had cheered and comforted her to think of the last months of
his life.  It was, in truth, the long abiding in the land of Beulah, the
valley and the shadow of death long past, and the towers and gates of
the celestial city full in sight.

"No; whatever may come upon us now," she added humbly, "nothing can take
away the knowledge that it is well with him."

Through the whole of the long history, given with many tears, Mrs Elder
never spoke of the poverty that had fallen upon them, or of her own
ill-remunerated toil.  His last days had been days of comfort,
undisturbed by any apprehension with regard to the future of his wife
and children; for the stroke which deprived them of the last remnant of
their means did not fall till he was at rest.

The candle had long since sunk in the socket, and they were sitting in
the darkness, which the moonlight, streaming in through the small attic
window, only partially dispelled.  Not a sound but the soft breathing of
the sleeping children, and the hum of voices from the city below, broke
the stillness of the pause which followed.  Each was busy with her own
thoughts.  The prevailing feeling in Mrs Blair's heart was gratitude,
both for her dead brother and her living sister's sake.  That his last
days had been days of such peace and comfort, that his trust in Christ
had been so firm, and his hope of happiness so sure, was matter for
fervent thanksgiving.  Nor were the humble resignation and patient faith
of his wife less a cause of rejoicing to her.  She felt rebuked for her
own fears and faithlessness as the narrative went on, and she thanked
God for the love that had been so mercifully mingled in the bitter cup
that had been given them to drink.

Long after her sister was sleeping by her side did Mrs Blair lie awake,
revolving in her mind some possible plan for finding a home for the
widow and her children in the country, for that none of them could long
endure such a life as they had lately been living was only too evident.

It seemed to her that she had never felt her poverty till now.  Bitterly
did she regret her inability to help them.  From the abundance that had
blessed her youth and middle age a mere pittance had been saved,
scarcely enough to maintain herself, and altogether insufficient to
enable her to gratify her benevolent feelings by doing for them as she
wished.  She had removed from her early home to a little hamlet among
the hills, and had taken up her abode in a cottage scarcely better than
a mountain shieling; and there the last few years had been passed.  She
had opened a school for the children of the cottagers, happy in being
useful in this way to those whom she could now assist in no other.

To this home, poor as it was, she longed to take the widow and children
of her brother.  Many a plan she considered for eking out her scanty
means that she might do so; and the grey dawn was beginning to break
before she closed her eyes in sleep.  The future was still dark before
her.  She saw no way to bring about what she so earnestly desired.
There was nothing to do but leave it all in the Hand which is strong to
help in time of need.  And what better could she do than cling to the
promise which God has given?

"God of the widow!  Father of the fatherless! interpose for them," she
prayed.  And her prayer was heard and answered.



CHAPTER TWO.

HOW AUNT JANET'S PRAYER WAS ANSWERED.

Yes: her prayer was heard and answered; but it was in God's way, not in
hers.  When Mrs Blair woke from her short and unrefreshing slumber, she
found that the morning was far advanced.  Lilias had been long astir.
Breakfast was ready; and the child was now standing beside her mother,
assisting her to dress.  But the effort to sit up seemed too much for
Mrs Elder.

"It's no use trying, Lilias, my dear," she said, at last, laying her
aching head back on the pillow again.  "I'm either too ill or too weary
to rise.  Thank God, it is the day of rest.  I shall be better
to-morrow."

But this was not to be.  Through all that long day she lay, tossing in
restless wakefulness or moaning in feverish slumber.  Mrs Blair, too,
worn out by her long journey and her sleepless night, seemed unable to
make the slightest exertion.  Lilias went from one to the other,
ministering to their wants; and her loving voice and gentle touch
brought comfort to their hearts, though she could not soothe their
bodily pain.

"You are a kind little nurse, Lilias," said her aunt, detaining the hand
that had been laid lovingly on her.  "I am sure you have the will to
help us, if you only had the power."

"Oh, I wish I could do something for you, aunt!  I am afraid you are
very weary.  Maybe if I were to read a little to you, the time wouldn't
seem so long," And she laid her hand on her own little Bible as she
spoke.

"Yes, love, read: I shall be very glad to listen."

So she read, in her clear, childish voice, psalm after psalm, till her
aunt could not but wonder at the skill with which she seemed to choose
those most suitable to their circumstances.  By-and-by, after a little
pause, she said:

"Some way, I like the Psalms, aunt.  Do you not like them?  They seem to
say what we want to say so much better than we can ourselves."

"Yes, my child; that is true.  And so you like the Psalms best, do you?"
said her aunt.

"Not _best_,--at least, not always;--only when I am weary or sad.  There
are some chapters in the New Testament that I like best of all.  This is
Archie's chapter."  And she turned to the fifteenth of Luke.  "Archie
thinks it is grand, this about the joy among the angels in heaven; and
this, too, about the Father's love;" and she read, "`But when the father
saw him, he had compassion upon him, and ran, and fell on his neck, and
kissed him.'"

"Archie never tires of that," she said, smiling at her brother, who had
been sitting with his eyes fixed upon her, listening as she read.  "And
this is the one I like best, about Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus."  And
she read the eleventh chapter of John, but paused before she got to the
end.

"I never like to read the rest, about their taking counsel to slay Him,
so soon after they had seen all this.  Sometimes I can hardly make it
seem true, it is so sad.  But I like the story, oh, so much!"  And she
read again slowly, "`Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and
Lazarus.'"  And again, "`Jesus said unto her, I am the Resurrection, and
the Life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he
live: and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.'"

"Do you like it, aunt?"

"Yes, love; it is a fine chapter."

"It's maybe not better than many and many a one here," said Lilias,
slowly turning over the leaves of her Bible; "but I happened on it once
when I needed something to help me, and I've liked it ever since."

"And what time was that?" asked her aunt, much interested.

"Oh, it was long ago," answered Lilias, lowering her voice, and looking
to see if her mother still slept.  "It was just after father died.
Mother was ill, and I thought God was sending us too much trouble; and I
came upon this chapter, and it did me so much good!  Not that I thought
Jesus would raise up my father again, but I knew He could do greater
things than that if He pleased; and I knew He had not forgotten us in
our troubles, more than He had forgotten Mary and Martha, though He
stayed still in the same place where He was, two whole days after they
had sent for Him because their brother was sick.  No trouble has seemed
so bad since then; and none ever will again, come what may."

"Come what may!"  Little was Lilias thinking of all that might be hidden
in those words.  She gradually came to know, as that night and the next
day and night passed away, and the dawning of the third day found her
mother no better, but rather worse.  Mrs Blair had concealed her own
anxiety, for the children's sake.  Believing her sister's illness to be
the consequence of over-exertion, she had thought that rest and quiet
would be sufficient to restore her; but these three days had made no
change for the better, and, fearing the worst, she asked Lilias if she
knew any doctor to whom they might apply.

"Yes; there is Dr Gordon, who attended my father and Archie.  We have
not seen him for a long time, but I think I could find his house."  And,
with trembling eagerness, she prepared to go out.

It rained violently, but Lilias scarcely knew it, as she ran rather than
walked along the street.  It was still early, and the doctor had not
gone out.  When the servant carried in the little girl's message, he
repeated the name several times, as if to recall it.

"Mrs Elder!--I had lost sight of her this long time.  Yes, certainly I
will go.  Where does she live now?"

The servant replied that the child who brought the message was waiting
to show him the way; and in a few minutes he was ready to go with her.
Lilias, who was standing at the door, started homeward as soon as he
appeared, and hurried on almost as rapidly as she came, so that the
doctor had some difficulty in keeping her in sight.

"Are you sure you are not mistaking the way?" said he, as Lilias waited
for him at the corner of the street, or rather the alley that led to the
attic; "surely Mrs Elder cannot be living in a place like this?"

Lilias threw back her bonnet, and now, for the first time, looked in the
doctor's face.  "Yes, sir, we have lived here ever since the time you
used to come and see Archie."

"Oh, he! my Lily of the valley, this is you, is it?  Well, don't cry,"
he added; for his kindly voice had brought the tears to the child's
eyes.  "We shall have your mother quite well in a day or two again,
never fear."

But he looked grave indeed as he stood beside her, and took her burning
hand in his.

"You don't think my mother will be long ill?" said Lilias, looking up
anxiously into his face as he stood beside the bed.

"No, my child; I don't think she will be long ill," said he, gravely.

And Lilias, reassured by his words, and fearing no evil, smiled almost
brightly again, as she went quietly about her household work.

"You think her dying, then?" said Mrs Blair, to whom his words conveyed
a far different meaning.

"She is not dying yet; but, should her present symptoms continue long,
she cannot possibly survive.  She must have been exerting herself far
beyond her strength or living long without nourishing food, to have
become reduced to a state so frightfully low as that in which I find
her."

"She has been doing both, I fear," said her sister, sadly.  "She has
sacrificed herself.  And, yet, what could she do?  They have had nothing
for many months between them and want, but the labour of her hands, and
the few pence that poor child could earn.  God help them!"

"God help them, indeed!" echoed the doctor earnestly.

He gave her what hope he could.  He said it was possible, only just
possible, that she might rally.  It would depend on the strength of her
constitution.  Nothing that he could do for her would be left undone.

"In the mean time, we must hope for the best."

But, with so much cause to fear, it was no easy thing to hope; and to
Mrs Blair the day was a long and anxious one.  Her sister seemed
conscious at intervals; but for the greater part of the time she lay
quite still, giving no evidence of life, save by her quick and laboured
breathing.  When Dr Gordon came again at night there was no change for
the better; and, though he did not say so, it was evident to Mrs Blair
that he anticipated the worst.

"And must she die without recovering consciousness?  Can she speak no
word to her children before she goes?"

"It is possible she may die without speaking again.  But if she revives
so much as to speak, it will be very near the end."

Lilias had gone out on an errand, so that she did not see the doctor;
and her aunt's heart grew sick at the thought of telling her that her
mother must so soon die.  Archie evidently had some idea of his mother's
state; for, though he did not speak, he gazed anxiously into his aunt's
face as she turned away from the bed.

"Poor boy!  Poor, helpless child!" she murmured, stooping suddenly over
him.  Poor boy, indeed!  He knew it all now.  He asked no questions.  He
needed to ask none; but he hid his face in the pillow, and sobbed as if
his heart would break.  At length Lilias' footstep was heard on the
stair, and he hushed his sobs to listen.  She came up step by step,
slowly and wearily; for the watching and anxiety of the last few days
and nights were beginning to tell upon her.

"Well, aunt?" she said, laying down the burden she had brought up, and
looking hopefully into her aunt's face.  Mrs Blair could not speak for
a moment; and Lilias, startled by her grave looks, exclaimed:

"Does Dr Gordon think my mother worse?"

"She is not much better, I fear, love," said her aunt, drawing her
towards her, and holding her hands firmly in her own.  Lilias gave a
fearful glance into her face.  The truth flashed upon her; but she put
it from her in terror.

"We must have patience, aunt.  She has had no time to grow better yet."

"Yes, love; we must have patience.  Whatever God shall see fit to send
on us, we must not distrust Him, Lilias."

"Yes, we must have patience," said the child, scarcely knowing what she
said.  She went and knelt down beside the bed, and spoke to her mother;
but her voice had no power to rouse her from the heavy slumber into
which she had fallen.  In a little while she rose, and went quietly
about arranging the things in the room.  Then, with needless care, the
supper was placed on the table; for none of them could taste food.  Then
her brother was prepared for bed; but all the time she spoke no word,
and went about like one in a dream.

When she stooped to kiss her brother a good-night, the little boy
clasped his arms about her neck, and wept aloud.  But she did not weep;
she laid her head down on the pillow beside him, gently soothing him
with hand and voice; and, when at last he had sobbed himself to sleep,
she disengaged his arms from her neck, and, rising, placed herself on a
low stool beside her mother's bed.

Mrs Blair thought it better to leave her to herself.  Indeed, what
could she say to comfort her?  And so the child sat a long time gazing
into her mother's face, her own giving no sign of the struggle that was
going on within.  At first the one thought that filled her mind was that
it was impossible her mother could be going to die.  It seemed too
dreadful to be true; and, then, it was so sudden!  Her father had been
with them for months after they knew that he must die, and her mother
had been quite well only three days ago.  No; it could not be!

And, yet, such things had been before.  She thought of a little girl,
rosy and strong, who had sickened and died in three short days; and it
might be so with her mother.  How should she ever live without her?  Oh,
if she could only die too, and have done with life and its struggles!
Everything was forgotten in the misery of the moment; and with a moan
that revealed to her aunt something of what she was suffering, she
leaned forward on the bed.

"Lily," said a voice beside her.

Lilias started.  It was the first time her mother had spoken during the
day, and the child bent eagerly over her and kissed her.

"Lily, love, read to me the twelfth of Hebrews," said her mother, in a
low, changed voice.

By a strong effort Lilias quieted herself, and read on till she came to
the eleventh verse: "`Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be
joyous, but grievous; but afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of
righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.'"

"You believe that, Lily?" said her mother.

"Yes, mother," said the child, in a trembling voice.

"And you'll mind it by-and-by, darling, and comfort your brother with
the words?  It won't be for long, Lily.  You'll soon be with us there."

"Mother! mother!" gasped the child, losing her self-control, as she
threw herself upon the bed and clasped her arms about her mother's neck.
For a few minutes her frame shook with her sobs.  Fearing the effect of
this strong emotion on the mother, Mrs Blair came to the bed; but she
did not speak, and by a strong effort she calmed herself again.

"Lily," said her mother, in a moment or two, "I have many things to say
to you, and I have not much strength left.  You must calm yourself,
darling, and listen to me."

"But, mother, you are not much worse to-night, are you?"

"God is very good to us both, my child, in giving me a little strength
and a clear mind at the last.  What I have to say will comfort you
afterwards, Lily.  I want to tell my darling what a comfort she has been
to me through all my time of trouble.  I have thanked God for my
precious daughter many a time when I was ready to sink.  Archie will
never want a mother's care while he has you; and for his sake, love, you
must not grieve too much for me.  It will only be for a little while;
and, then, think how happy we shall be."

There was a pause.

"Will you promise, Lily?"

"Yes, mother; I promise.  It will only be for a little while."

"I do not fear to leave my darlings.  God will keep them safe till we
meet again."

There was a long silence after that; and then she called her sister by
name, and Mrs Blair bent over her.

"Kiss me, Janet.  God sent you to us now.  Comfort--Alex's bairns."

Again there was silence.  The mother's hand moved uneasily, as if in
search of something.  Her sister lifted it, and laid it over her
daughter's neck, and then it was at rest.  Not a sound broke the
stillness of the hour.  They thought she slept; and she did sleep; but
she never woke again.  The early dawn showed the change that had passed
over her face, and Lilias knew that she was motherless.

Of how the next days passed, Lilias never had a distinct remembrance.
She only knew that when, on the third morning, strangers came to bear
her mother away, it seemed a long, long time since she died.  It seemed
like looking back over years, rather than days, to recall the time when
she lay with her arms clasped around her neck, and listened to her dying
words.

During this time, Mrs Blair had watched her niece with some anxiety.
There was no violent bursts of grief, but there was a look of desolation
on her face which it was heartbreaking to see.  She was quiet and gentle
through all; willing, indeed eager, to render assistance to her aunt
when it was required; but as soon as she was free again she returned to
the low stool beside the bed on which her mother lay.

The time was passed by Archie in alternate fits of violent weeping and
depression almost amounting to stupor.  Lilias tried hard to perform the
promise made to her dying mother.  She put aside her own sorrow to
soothe his.  She read to him; she sang to him; and when he would listen
to neither reading nor singing, she would murmur such words of comfort
as her mother had spoken to her; and their burden always was, "They are
so happy now.  They have found such rest and peace; and it will be but a
little while, and then we shall be with them there."

And then, when he grew quiet and listened to her, she would try to meet
his wistful looks with a smile; but when he was quiet or asleep, she
always returned to the place beside her dead mother.

But they bore her mother away at last; and then for a moment Lilias'
strength and courage forsook her.  The cry of her desolate heart would
no longer be hushed.

"Oh, mother! mother!"

Even the sound of her brother's weeping had not power, for a time, to
recall her from the indulgence of her grief.

On the morning of her sister's death, Mrs Blair had written to a
friend, asking him to make arrangements for conveying the orphans to her
humble home; and they were to leave the town on the day succeeding that
of the funeral.  Little was left to be done.  A few articles of
furniture were to be disposed of, a few trifles, heirlooms in the family
for several generations, were to be taken with them; and it was with a
feeling of relief that Mrs Blair welcomed the honest carrier of
Kirklands who was on the morrow to convey them away from the unhealthy
town to the free fresh air of their native hills.  Only one thing more
remained to be done, and the afternoon was nearly over before Mrs Blair
found courage to speak of it.

"Lilias, if you are not too weary, I should like you to go out for me to
Dr Gordon's, love, if it will not be too much for you."

"I'm not weary, aunt.  I'll go, if you wish."  But she grew very pale,
remembering the last time she had gone there.

"Lilias," said her aunt, drawing her towards her, and kissing her
fondly, "you have been my own brave, patient lassie to-day.  You have
not forgotten your mother's words?"

"Oh, aunt, I wish to be patient, indeed I do.  But I fear I am not
really patient at heart."  And she wept now as though her heart would
break.

Her aunt let her weep freely for a few minutes, and then she said:

"It's not wrong for you to weep for your mother, Lilias; you must do
that.  But you know `He doth not afflict willingly;' and you can trust
His love, though you cannot see why this great sorrow has been sent upon
you.  You can say, `Thy will, not mine, be done.'"

"I am trying, Aunt Janet," said Lilias, looking up with a wavering smile
on her lips, almost sadder to see than tears, as her aunt could not help
thinking.  She said no more, but kissed her and let her go.

It was with a grave face and slow step that Lilias took her way to Dr
Gordon's house.  When she was fairly in the street, a wild desire seized
her to go to the place where her father and mother lay, and she took a
few rapid steps in that direction.  It was not in the narrow kirk-yard
seen from their window, but quite away in another part of the town,
nearer to the place where they used to live, and Lilias paused before
she had gone far, for she doubted if it would be right to venture down
at that hour.  She stood still a moment.

"I shall not see them.  They are not there.  I must have patience."  And
she turned slowly back again.

It was growing dark in the room in which, for a few minutes, she waited
for Dr Gordon, and through the half-open door she caught a glimpse of a
pleasant parlour, echoing with the music of voices.  Happy, cheerful
voices they were; but Lilias's heart grew sadder as she listened, and
when at last Dr Gordon appeared, it was with difficulty that she could
restrain her tears.

Speaking very fast, as if she were afraid that her voice would fail her,
she said: "We are going away, sir, to-morrow with my aunt, Mrs Blair,
and she sent me with this to you."

The doctor took what the child held towards him, but instantly replaced
it in her hands.

"And so that was your aunt I saw the other day?" said he.

"Yes; Aunt Janet Blair, our father's sister.  We are going to live with
her in the country, and it's far away; and, if you please, sir, would
you come and see Archie again?  My aunt didn't bid me ask you, but it
would be such a comfort if you would."  And she looked up beseechingly
into his face.

"Yes, surely, with a good will," said Dr Gordon heartily; "and
to-night, too, it must be, if you are going to-morrow.  No, no, my
lassie," he added, as Lilias made another attempt to place the money in
his hand.  "I have not yet eaten orphans' bread, and I'm not going to
begin now."

"But my aunt sent it, sir; and she was not always poor; and I think she
would like you to take it."

His only answer was to press her fingers more closely over the little
packet of money, as he drew her towards the parlour-door.

"I will go with you by-and-by, but first you must come in and see my
boys.  Mrs Gordon wants to see you, too," said he.

The room into which they passed was a large and pleasant one, and Lilias
never forgot it, nor the kind words which were spoken to her there.  The
bright yet softened light of a lamp made all parts of it visible.  Over
the mantelpiece was a large mirror, and there were heavy crimson
curtains on the windows, and many pictures on the walls.  On a low
chair, near the fire, sat a lady with a boy in her arms, and several
other children were playing about the room.  They became quiet as their
father entered, and gazed with some curiosity on the stranger.

"This is my little friend, Lilias Elder," said the doctor.  "It is
fortunate she came to-night.  We might not have found her to-morrow."

Mrs Gordon received Lilias very kindly, speaking to her in a voice so
tender, that, in spite of herself, it brought the tears to her eyes.
Noticing her emotion, Mrs Gordon did not speak to her again for a
moment, and the children gathering round her, she quickly recovered
herself in receiving and returning their greetings.

When tea was fairly over, and the boys had gone to bed, a long
conversation took place between Lilias and her friends.  Dr Gordon was
the father of six sons, but he had no daughter, and his heart overflowed
with love and pity for the orphan girl.  Through all the long illness of
her father and brother, she had been an object of interest to the kind
physician.  Her never-wearying attention to both, and the evident
comfort and support she had been to her mother in all her trials, had
filled him with admiration and pleasure.  For months he had lost sight
of the family, and various circumstances had occurred to withdraw his
thoughts from the subject; but now that he had found Lilias an orphan
and in want, he longed to take her to his heart and home.

"I ought, perhaps, to have spoken first to your aunt, your natural
guardian; but I think she will be willing to give you up to us.  We will
try and make you happy, my child."

Lilias shed many grateful tears as their plans were unfolded to her; but
to all their kind words she had but one answer.  It could not be.  She
could never leave Archie.  He was ill and lame, and had no one else, and
she had promised her mother always to take care of him.

It was in vain that they assured her that his health and comfort should
be cared for; that, though for the present they might be separated, he
would still be her brother, and that her change of circumstances would
be, as beneficial to him as to her in the end.  They urged her to
consider, and not to decide hastily.  They would wait, weeks or months,
till her brother was better, so that she could leave him with her aunt.

But no.  It could not be.  It would seem like forsaking him.  She had
promised their mother always to take care of him.  Nothing could make it
right to break that promise.

"Indeed you must not be grieved, or think me ungrateful," she pleaded.
"It would not be right.  It would break Archie's heart to part from me
now."

And so they let her go.  Dr Gordon did not speak to her, but he held
her hand firmly as they passed down the street.  Lilias thought he was
angry at her decision; but he was not angry.  He was only grieved.  When
they reached the door, she lingered.

"Indeed, sir, I could not do any other way; and, if you please, don't
tell my aunt all you have said to me to-night: she might think I would
be sorry afterwards, and I wish you wouldn't tell her."

"Well, child, I will not tell her, since it is your wish.  But remember,
if any trouble comes upon you, you must write and let me know."  And
Lilias joyfully assented to the condition.

The doctor's visit comforted them all greatly.  Archie's case he thought
by no means so hopeless as he had once thought it.  True, he might still
be lame; but he might be strong and healthy for all that.  The fresh air
of the hills would, he believed, work wonders for him: so he bade him
take heart; and the poor lad's pale face brightened as he said it.

To Mrs Blair he spoke of her brother in terms of respect and affection
that won her confidence at once; and when he earnestly entreated her to
consider him as a friend to the children, and to apply to him if trouble
should overtake them, she promised to do so, without hesitation or
reserve.

When he bade "good-bye" to Lilias, he took her face between his hands
and kissed her many times on lip and brow, calling her a firm little
thing, though she seemed so gentle; and then he prayed, "God bless her,"
and they were left alone.



CHAPTER THREE.

THE NEW HOME.

It was not without many tears that the two children bade farewell to the
little, dark room that had been their home so long.  True, they had
suffered much in it.  Many long, restless days and painful nights had
Archie passed there; but it was associated with the memory of their
mother, and it was like a second parting from her to leave it.

The morning was dark and dull.  A heavy mist lay on the town, and for
the first few miles their journey was silent and sad.  But, as the sun
rose higher, the clouds parted and the mist rolled away, revealing to
the unaccustomed eyes of the children pleasant glimpses of hill and
valley.

Their way, after they had fairly left the great city and its suburbs
behind them, lay through quiet and unfrequented roads.  They crossed a
broad moor, and then for a time passed between low hills covered with
broom or heather.  Afterwards they came upon cultivated land lying
around long, low farm-houses.  Sometimes these dwellings were close by
the road, and then they caught, with delight, glimpses of barn-door
fowls and garden-flowers; and sometimes there were children playing on
the green slopes around their homes.  But oftener the farm-houses were
far away on the hill-sides or in the quiet valleys.  In some early
fields they saw the reapers busy with the harvest; but most of the way
was quiet,--even lonely.  For miles and miles they saw no living thing
save a grey plover whistling over their heads, or now and then a flock
of sheep among the hills far away.

Much of the way Mrs Blair walked, and sometimes Lilias walked with her;
but she soon became weary.  It was a day long to be remembered by the
children,--their first day among the hills.  After so long in the close
streets of the town, it seemed as though they could never get enough of
the clear, fresh air and the pleasant country sights and sounds.
Everything seemed beautiful to them, moors, and hills, and golden
harvest-fields.  They did not talk much, only now and then one would
point out to the other some new object of interest, a glimpse of blue
water caught between the hills, or a lark upspringing from some grassy
knoll, singing as it soared.

In the middle of the day they stopped near a little village to rest.
The carrier went with his horse to the inn; but they sat down in the
shadow of a tree by the wayside, and ate the simple food they had
brought with them.

It was sunset before they reached their aunt's home; and a pleasant
place it seemed to them, though so poor and small.  It stood at a little
distance from the village of Kirklands.  On one side was a plot of
garden-ground, which some former occupant of the cottage had redeemed
from the common beyond.  It was sheltered on two sides by a hawthorn
hedge; and a low, whitewashed paling separated it from the highway.
There was little in it, except a few common vegetables, a border of
daisies and hearts-ease, and a rose-bush or two; but to Lilias it seemed
a charming place; and it was not without reluctance that she obeyed her
aunt's summons to come within when the dew began to fall.

It was, indeed, a new life that the brother and sister began at the
cottage.  During the first few weeks, the greater part of the time, when
the days were fine, was passed out-of-doors.  At first, Archie could not
get beyond the turf seat at the end of the cottage; but Lilias found her
way across the wide common and away to the hills and glens beyond.
After a time, Archie was able, by the help of his crutches, to go with
her; and many a pleasant path and quiet resting-place they found for
themselves.

Their favourite resort was at the most distant point to which Archie for
a while was able to go.  A great grey rock, partly covered with heather
and wild creepers, jutted out into the dry bed of a mountain stream.
Passing round it, they found a low seat made by an abrupt rent in the
rock, over which hung a slender mountain-ash.  In the winter, or after
heavy rains, this channel was filled with water; but now a tiny rivulet
only trickled down the middle of the bed, making a pleasant murmur among
the smooth, white pebbles over which it passed.  Here the children spent
many a happy hour.

Their most common theme of conversation was their father and mother, and
the events of the past two years.  The memory of the time before that
was more like a dream than like the recalling of events that had really
taken place.  Of their mother they spoke oftenest,--sometimes with tears
and regret for their own loss, but sometimes, too, with joy at the
thought of her gain, and the blessed rest to which she had attained.

"Do you think she was glad to go?" asked Archie, one day, after they had
been talking a long time.

"Yes; I think she was very glad to go; but at first it grieved her
sorely to think of leaving us behind.  I almost think she would have
gone sooner but for that.  After Aunt Janet came, it was different.
After that she seemed willing to go at any time."

There was a pause, and then Archie said:

"It is a pity that she didn't know, before she went away, how we should
come here, and what a bonny place it is.  Lily, do you think she sees us
now?"

"I don't know.  She may.  Anyway, after that night she was willing to
leave us.  Indeed, she told me the night she died that she didn't fear
for us."

The remembrance of that night always made Lilias' cheek grow pale; and
she did not speak again for some time.  At last she said:

"Yes, this is a bonny place, and we have been very happy here; but there
is one thing I am grieved for.  You know, Archie, Aunt Janet is poor,
and I fear in this place I shall not be able to find anything to do to
help her.  I fear I can't bide here long."

The thought of having to part from his sister had never come into
Archie's mind, and he looked at her in astonishment, as he said:

"But where would you go?"

"Oh, I don't know yet.  Only I think it's not right to burden Aunt Janet
more than can be helped.  I heard Mrs Stirling say that Mrs Graham, at
the manse, wanted some one to sew and help among the children; and maybe
I would do for her."

"Oh, Lily, surely you wouldn't go away.  What should I ever do without
you?" said Archie, weeping.

"Whisht, Archie," said his sister, soothingly; "do you think I would
like to go away from you?  But if it is right, we mustn't think whether
it is pleasant or not.  We won't grieve before the time, however.  Maybe
I'll never have to go.  We'll speak to Aunt Janet."

And so that night, after Archie was asleep, Lilias spoke to her aunt.

"Are you weary of me, Lilias, that you wish to leave me so soon?" asked
her aunt, gravely.

"Oh, aunt, you cannot think that.  If it were only not wrong for me to
bide here always!"

"And why do you not think it right to bide here always?" asked her aunt.

"Because I am young and strong, and I ought to be working for you,
rather than that you should be doing so much for me."

"But you have been working for me.  You have helped me greatly since you
came here."

"Yes, a little, perhaps," said Lilias, thoughtfully.  "But that's not
what I mean.  Are you not very poor now, Aunt Janet?"

"Well, I cannot say that I am very rich," said her aunt, smiling.  "But
I'm not so poor but that I can shelter my brother's orphan bairns for a
while at least."  And then she added, gravely, "I have no doubt but you
could make yourself very useful, and I dare say Mrs Graham would like
to have you there; but there are many reasons why such a thing is not to
be thought of."

"Will you tell me some of them, aunt?"

"You have no need to go, my child; and, even if you had, you are not
strong enough.  You are by no means fit for the work you would have to
do there; though you could have no better place than the manse.  No, no,
my lassie, you must bide here among the hills, and gather health and
strength for the struggles that life must bring to you as well as to
others.  All you could gain would but ill repay you for the loss of
health; and you are not very strong, dear."

"But I am stronger than one would think to see me; and I'll be getting
stronger, living in a country place.  I think I might be strong enough
for Mrs Graham."

"But, even if you were strong enough, for all our sakes, it is not to be
thought of that you should go now.  Archie would pine without you.  And
unless you are weary of this quiet place, and wish for a change, you
must put away all thought of leaving us, for a time at least."

"Weary!  Oh, no, aunt.  And I know Archie would miss me; but he could
spare me; and I could go if it was right.  I can do a great many things,
and I would try to learn."

"Yes, you can do a great many things; and that is one reason why I can't
spare you, Lily.  I think I have the best right to my brother's
daughter."  And she drew the little girl fondly towards her as she
spoke.

"Oh, aunt," exclaimed Lilias eagerly, "if I could really help you and be
a comfort to you, I would like nothing half so well."

"You can be useful to me.  You are a comfort to me.  I hardly know how I
could part from you now, dear.  Our way of living must be very humble;
but that will not be so bad as being parted--will it, my Lily?  You have
learnt to love me a little, my child?"

Lilias answered by putting her arms round her aunt's neck, and kissing
her again and again.  Then in a low voice she said:

"You mind me of my father."

"And you mind me of the brother I loved and watched over as a child, and
honoured as a man.  If it is God's will, we will not be parted, my
beloved child."

And so it was settled, and Lilias's heart was set at rest about the
matter; and in the morning her face told the tidings to Archie before
her lips could speak the words.

Mrs Blair's cottage lay at the distance of several miles from the kirk
of Dunmoor, which she had all her life attended.  It was some time
before Archie was able to go so far, and Lilias had stayed at home with
him.  At length, one fine, clear Sabbath in the end of September, Mrs
Blair yielded to their entreaties to be permitted to go with her; and
early in the morning they set out.  Instead of going by the highway,
they took a pleasanter path over the hills, resting often, for Archie's
sake, on some grey stone or mossy bank.  The length of the way was
beguiled by pleasant talk.  Mrs Blair told them of the Sabbath journeys
to the kirk from Glen Elder when she and her little brother were all in
all to each other; and Lilias and Archie could never grow weary of
hearing of their father's youthful days.  Many in the kirk that day
looked with interest on the children of Alexander Elder, as they sat by
his sister's side, in the very same seat where he used to sit so many
years ago; and many an earnest "God bless them!" went up to the Father
of the fatherless in their behalf.  Yes, it was the very same seat in
which their father used to sit; and Lilias could hardly repress her
tears as she saw his initials, with a date many years back, carved in
the dark wood before her.  The psalm-book, too, which he had used, had
never been removed; and his name, in a large schoolboy's hand, was
written many times on its blank leaves.  Many of the Psalms were marked,
too, as having been learnt at such or such a time; and it was long
before Lilias could think of anything but the little lad like Archie
(only rosy and strong) who had sat there with his sister so many years
ago.  The voice that spoke from the brown old pulpit was the same to
which he had listened; for the aged minister had been her grandfather's
friend, and her father had grown up beneath his eye, one of the dearest
of a well-beloved flock.

His face and voice were to Lilias like those of a dear, familiar friend;
and when he spoke of the things of which she loved to hear, she could no
longer restrain her tears: indeed, she never thought of trying.

"For my ways are not as your ways; neither are my thoughts as your
thoughts," were the words from which he spoke; and when he told them how
it was oftentimes the way of our good Father in heaven to lead His
chosen, worn and weary, fainting beneath heavy burdens, over rough
places, through darkness and gloom, but all safe home at last, the words
went to the child's heart as though they had been spoken to her alone of
all who were waiting for a portion there; and her heart made answer,
"What does it matter?  It is only for a little while, and then all safe
home at last.  Not one forgotten, not one left out, in that day."

Archie, too, listened intently, but not with tears.  There was an
earnest look in his eyes, and a grave smile about his mouth, as though
he were hearing some glad tidings; and when the minister sat down, he
leaned over towards his sister, and whispered softly:

"I like that."

And Lilias smiled in reply.

When the service was over, and Mrs Blair and the children had passed
out into the kirk-yard, Mrs Graham, the minister's widowed daughter,
came and invited them into the manse till it should be time for the
service in the afternoon.  Mrs Blair went with her; but Archie was shy,
and liked better to stay out in the pleasant kirk-yard; and Lilias
stayed with him.  The place had a quiet Sabbath look about it, which
suited well the feelings of the children; and, as the resting-place of
many friends of their father, it was full of interest to them.  Many of
the people who had come--from a distance stayed also, and seated
themselves, in small parties, here and there among the grave-stones; but
not a loud or discordant voice arose to break the silence that reigned
around.

The kirk itself was a quaint old building, around which many interesting
historical associations clustered.  The large stones of which it was
built were dark with age; and the ivy that grew thickly over the western
wall gave it the appearance of an ancient ruin.  Dark firs and yew-trees
grew around the kirk-yard, and here and there over the grave of a friend
the hand of affection had planted a weeping-willow.  On a low slab
beneath one of these the brother and sister sat for a time in silence,
broken at last by Archie.

"Oh, Lily! this is a bonny quiet place.  How I wish they were lying
here!"

"Yes," said Lilias, softly, "among their friends.  But it makes no
difference.  I never think of them as lying there."

"Oh, no! they are not there.  I suppose it is all the same to them.  But
yet, if I were going to die, I would like better to lie down here in
this quiet place than among the many, many graves yonder in the town.
Wouldn't you, Lily?"

"Yes; for some things I would.  I should like to be where the friends I
love could often come.  Look yonder how all the people are sitting
beside the graves of their own friends.  That is Ellen Wilson and her
brother beside their father's grave.  I read the name on the stone as I
came in this morning.  And Mrs Stirling's husband and children are
buried there in the corner where she is sitting.  She told me about them
the last time she was in.  I think the folk here must mind their friends
better than they would if they never saw their graves."

"But we'll never forget our father and mother, though we can't see their
graves," said Archie, eagerly; "I do wish they were lying here beside my
grandfather and all the rest."

Lilias did not answer, for they were about to be interrupted.  Only one
of the persons who were approaching them was known to her, and she did
not think her a very agreeable acquaintance, and a slight feeling of
impatience rose within her as she drew near.

Mrs Stirling was one of those unfortunate persons who constantly move
in an atmosphere of gloom.  Her face seemed to express a desire to
banish all cheerfulness and silence all laughter wherever she came.  She
had never, even in her best days, been blessed with a heavenly temper,
and much care and many sorrows had made it worse.  Men had dealt hardly
with her, and God, she believed, had done the same.  One short month had
made her a widow and childless, and then other troubles had followed.
From circumstances of comfort she had been reduced, by the carelessness
and dishonesty of those whom she had trusted, to a state of comparative
poverty.  This last trouble had been, in a measure, removed, but the
bitterness it had stirred in her heart had never subsided.

If a subject had a dark side, she not only chose to look at it herself,
but held it up before the eyes of all concerned.  Having once been
deceived, she never ceased to suspect, and, which was still worse, she
even strove (from the best of motives, as she believed) to excite
suspicion and discomfort in the minds of others; and, notwithstanding
her well-known character as a prophesier of evil things, she did
sometimes succeed in making people unhappy.  She was, as the minister
said, a pitiable example of the effects of unsanctified affliction, and
a warning to all who felt inclined to murmur under the chastening hand
of God.

During one or two visits at Mrs Blair's cottage, Mrs Stirling had made
Lilias uncomfortable, she scarce knew why; and now, though she did not
say so to Archie, she heartily wished she would stay at the other end of
the kirk-yard.

"Weel, bairns," she said, as she drew near, "your aunt didna take you
with her into the manse.  Are you not weary sitting so long on the
stones?"

"No," said Lilias.  "Archie liked better to bide out here.  This is a
bonny place."

"Oh, ay, it's a bonny place enow," said Mrs Stirling.  Then, turning to
Archie, she said, "And so you liked better to bide out here than to go
in to your dinner at the manse?  Well, it's a good bairn that likes to
do what it's bidden.  I dare say Mrs Blair would have felt some
delicacy in taking you both into the manse parlour; though why she
should, is more than the like of me knows."

To this there was no reply to be made; and in a minute, turning again to
Lilias, she asked:

"And when are you going to the manse as nurse, my dear?"

Lilias said she was not going at all.

"No!  Where then?  To Pentlands?  I told your aunt that Mrs Jones, the
housekeeper, wanted a lassie to help in the kitchen; but it's a place
full of temptations for a young thing like you.  I wonder at Mrs
Blair."

Lilias replied, rather hastily, that she was not going anywhere just
now; she was going to bide at home with her aunt.

"Well, well, my dear, you needn't be angry at my asking; though there's
little wonder that the daughter of Alexander Elder shouldn't like to
have it said that she ought to go and gain her bread as a servant.  We
can't always part with our pride when we part with our money.  Nobody
knows that better than I do."

"It's not pride that keeps me at home," said Lilias, in a low voice.  "I
would go gladly if my aunt thought it needful; but she says it is not."

"Oh, well, my dear, I dare say your aunt knows best.  She may have money
that I didn't know of.  Maybe you wasn't so ill off as is said."

"Whisht! do you not see that you are vexing the bairns?  Never mind her,
my dear," said the pleasant-looking young woman whom Lilias had called
Ellen Wilson, sitting down on the stone beside her.  "I think this part
of the country seems to agree with you both.  Your brother looks much
better than he did when he came first."

Lilias smiled gratefully in answer to this, and looked with loving pride
at her brother.  But Nancy Stirling had not yet said her say.

"Looks better, does he?  I wonder how he could have looked before?  Such
a whitefaced creature I have seldom seen.  He reminds me of the laddie
that died at Pentlands, of a decline, a month since.  I doubt he isn't
long for this world."

"Whisht!" again interrupted Ellen, "you don't know what you are saying,
I think."

"Archie is much better," said Lilias, eagerly.  "He couldn't set his
foot to the ground when we first came here; and now he can walk miles."

"Oh, ay; change of air is ay thought good for the like of him.  But it's
a deceitful complaint.  We all ken that your father died of
consumption,--and your mother too, it's likely."

"No," said Lilias, in a low voice.  "She died of fever."

"Mrs Stirling," exclaimed Ellen Wilson, "I canna but wonder that one
that has had the troubles you have had, should have so little
consideration for other folks.  Do you not see that you are vexing the
bairns?"

"Weel, it's not my design nor my desire to vex them,--poor things!  It
never harmed me to get a friend's sympathy; though it's little ever I
got.  I'll not trouble them."  And she went and seated herself at a
little distance from the children.

An old man, with very white hair, but a ruddy and healthy countenance,
had been walking up and down the path, his hands clasped behind his
back, and his staff beneath his arm.  As he passed the place where Mrs
Stirling sat, he paused, saying in a cheerful, kindly voice:

"This is a bonny day, Mrs Stirling."

"Oh, ay," replied Nancy, drearily; "it's a bonny day."

"And a fine harvest we are getting," said the old man, again,--"if we
were only thankful to God for His undeserved goodness."

"Oh, ay; considering all things, the harvest's not so bad in some
places, and in others it's just middling.  It's not got in yet.  We must
wait awhile before we set ourselves up upon it."

"It would ill become us to set ourselves up on that, or any other good
gift of the Lord," said the old man, gravely; "but you and I, Nancy,
have seen many a different harvest from this in our day.  We are ready
enough to murmur if the blessing be withheld, and to take it as our
right when it is sent.  There's many a poor body in the countryside who
may thank God for the prospect of an easy winter.  He has blessed us in
our basket and in our store."

"Oh, well, I dare say I'm as thankful as my neighbours, though I say
less about it," said Nancy, tartly.  "I dare say there's many a poor
body will need all they have, and more, before the winter's over."

"You see you needn't mind what Mrs Stirling says," said Ellen, who with
the children had listened to the conversation thus far.  "She's always
boding ill.  It's her nature.  She has had many things to make the world
look dreary to her,--poor woman!  Yonder is James Muir, one of our
elders,--a good man, if ever there was one.  He knew your father, and
your grandfather too."

Yes, he had known their father well; and the next time he turned down
the path he stopped to speak to them.  Not in many words, but kindly and
gravely, as his large, kind heart prompted; and Lilias felt that he was
one that might be relied on in time of need.

"There's your aunt again, with Mrs Graham and the manse bairns," said
Ellen, as they approached.  They rose, and went to meet them at the kirk
door; and while their aunt and Mrs Graham waited to speak a few words
to James Muir, they exchanged sly glances with the young people
designated by Ellen as "the manse bairns."

They were the grandchildren of the aged minister.  Their father, his
only son,--a minister too,--had, within a year, died in the large town
where he had been settled, and his widow had come with her children to
the manse, which was now their home.

Too shy to speak to the strangers, they cast many a look of sympathy on
the lame boy and his sister who were both fatherless and motherless.
By-and-by the little Jessie ventured to put into Archie's hand a bunch
of brilliant garden-flowers that she had carried.  Archie did not speak;
but his smile thanked her, and the flowers bloomed in the cottage-window
for many days.



CHAPTER FOUR.

LIFE AT KIRKLANDS.

But all the days in Kirklands were not sunny days.  The pleasant harvest
time went over, and the days grew short and rainy.  Not with the
pleasant summer rain, coming in sudden gusts to leave the earth more
fresh and beautiful when the sunshine came again, but with a dull,
continuous drizzle, dimming the window-panes, and hiding in close,
impenetrable mist the outline of the nearest summits.  The pleasant
rambles among hills and glens, and the pleasanter restings by the
burn-side, were all at an end now.  The swollen waters of the burn hid
the stone seat where the children had loved to sit, and the sere leaves
of the rowan-tree lay scattered in the glen.  Even when a blink of
sunshine came, they could not venture out among the dripping heather,
but were fain to content themselves with sitting on the turf seat at the
house-end.

For all Aunt Janet's prophecy had not come true, thus far.  There were
no roses blooming on Archie's cheeks yet; and sometimes, when Lilias
watched his pale face, as he sat gazing out into the mist, she was
painfully reminded of the time when he used to watch the shadow of the
spire coming slowly round to the yew-tree by the kirk-yard gate.

But there were no days now so long and sad as those days had been.  The
memory of their last great grief was often present with them; but the
sense of orphanhood grew less bitter, day by day, as time went on.
Archie was not quite strong and well yet, but he was far better than he
had been for many a long month; and Lilias' feeling of anxiety on his
account began to wear away.  Gradually they found for themselves new
employments and amusements, and their life fell into a quiet and
pleasant routine again.

A new source of interest and enjoyment was opened to them in the return
of Mrs Blair's scholars after the harvest-holidays were over.  There
were between fifteen and twenty girls, and a few boys, whose ages varied
from six to twelve or fourteen.  They were taught reading, writing, and
the catechism; and some of the elder girls were taught to knit and sew.

Archie used sometimes to be weary of the hum of voices and the unvaried
routine of the lessons; but Lilias never was.  To her it was a constant
pleasure to assist her aunt.  Indeed, after a time some of the classes
were entirely given up to her care.  She had never been much with other
children, but her gentle tones and quiet womanly ways gave her a control
over them; and even the roughest and most unruly of the village children
learnt to yield her a ready obedience.

Mrs Blair had striven to do faithfully the work she had undertaken of
instructing these ignorant children; but at her age the formation of new
habits was by no means easy.  The constant attention to trifles which
the occupation required was at times inexpressibly irksome to her; and
the relief which the assistance of Lilias gave her was proportionally
great.

"I'm sure I know not how I ever got on without my lassie," she said, one
day, after watching with wonder and delight the patience with which she
arranged the little girls' work,--a task for which patience was greatly
needed.  "I shall grow to be a useless body if I let you do all that is
to be done in this way.  Are you not weary with your day's work, Lilias,
my dear?"

"Weary!" said Lilias, laughing.  "I don't need to be weary, for all I
have done.  It's only play to hear the bairns read and spell.  I like it
very much."

"But it's not play to take out and put into shape, and to sew as you
have been doing for the last hour.  I fear I put too much upon you,
Lilias."

"Oh, now you are surely laughing at me.  I wish I could do ten times as
much.  Do I really help you, Aunt Janet?"

"Ay, more than you know, my darling.  But put by your work for a night,
and run down the brae, and freshen the roses that are just beginning to
bloom on your cheeks.  We mustn't let them grow white again, if we can
help it."

But the best time of all was when the children had gone home,--when,
with the door close shut against the wintry blast, they sat together
around the pleasant firelight, talking, or reading, or musing, as each
felt most inclined.  From her father's well-chosen library Mrs Blair
had preserved a few books, that were books indeed,--books of which every
page contained more real material for thought than many a much-praised
modern volume.  Read by themselves, the quaint diction of some of these
old writers must have been unintelligible to the children; but with the
grave and simple comments of their aunt to assist their understanding, a
new world of thought and feeling was opened to them.  Many a grave
discussion did they have on subjects whose names would convey no idea to
the minds of most children of their age.  There was often a mingling of
folly and wisdom in their opinions and theories, that amused and
surprised their aunt.  Archie's lively imagination sometimes ventured on
flights from which the grave expostulations of Lilias could not always
draw him.

"To the law and to the testimony, Archie, lad," was his aunt's
never-failing suggestion; and then his eager, puzzled face would be bent
over the Bible, till his wild imaginings vanished of themselves, without
waiting to be reasoned away.

But the history of their country was the chief delight of those long
winter evenings.  One read aloud; but the eyes of both rested on the
page with an eagerness that did not pass away after the first perusal.
The times and events that most interested them were gone over and over,
till they were ready to forget that they of whom they read had long
since passed away: Murray and Douglas, John Knox and Rutherford, and
Mary, lived and laboured, and sinned and suffered, still in their
excited feelings.  It is true, their interest and sympathy vacillated
between the contending parties.  They did not always abide by their
principles in the praise or blame awarded.  Their feelings were
generally on the side of the sufferers, whoever they might be; and if
their eyes sparkled with delight at the triumphant energy of Knox, their
tears for poor Queen Mary were none the less sincere.

But it was the history of the later times that stirred their hearts to
their inmost depths,--the times...

  "When in muirland and valley the standard of Zion,
  All bloody and torn, 'mong the heather was lying."

...When Charles strove to put in shackles the Scottish mind, and quench
in the Scottish heart that love for the pure and simple truth for which
the best and noblest have died.  About these times and these men they
were never weary of reading and speaking.

"There will never more be such times in Scotland," said Archie, as
Lilias shut the history, and took down the Bible and psalm-books for
their evening worship.

"Thank God, no!" said his aunt, hastily; "though one might think, from
your face, that it is no matter of thankfulness to you."

"I don't wish those times to come back," said the boy musingly; "but I
wish I had lived then.  It must have been worth a man's while to live in
those days."

"And why is it not as much worth a man's while to live in the days that
are to come as in the days that are past?" asked his aunt, with a smile.

Archie looked up quickly.

"I know what you are thinking, aunt:--that a poor cripple lad could have
done as little then as he can do now."  And Archie sighed.

"No: I was thinking that it needs as much courage and patience, and as
much of God's grace, for a poor cripple lad to bear (as He would have
him bear) the trouble He sends, as would have stood a man in good stead
before the face of Claverhouse himself.  The heroes of history are not
always the greatest heroes, after all, Archie, my laddie."

"Maybe not, aunt; but, then, it's only a sore leg I have to bear; and
who is the better whether I bear it well or ill?"

"Archie, man, you are speaking foolishly," returned, his aunt, gravely.
"It matters much to yourself whether you bear your trouble well or ill.
It was sent to you for discipline, and that you might be better fitted
for the honouring of His name; and He who sent it can make it answer
these ends in you as well as though He had cast your lot in those
troublous times, and made you a buckler of strength against His foes and
the foes of His people."

"But, aunt," said Lilias, "it's surely not wrong to wish to be placed
where we can do much for Him?  I don't wonder Archie should wish to have
lived in those days."

"No, love: such a wish is not wrong, provided it doesn't act as a
temptation to neglect present opportunities.  We are all by nature
self-seekers, and in no small danger of giving ourselves credit for
wishing to serve the Lord, when, maybe, He sees it is ourselves we wish
to serve.  The best evidence we can give that we would honour Him in a
larger sphere is, that we strive to honour Him in the sphere in which He
has placed us."

"But after all, aunt, it would be grand to be able to do as much for
God's cause as some of those men did.  I can't think that any one, to
say nothing of a poor cripple lad, has an opportunity to do as much now
as those men had."

"To do is a great thing in the sight of men.  But I am thinking that, in
His sight who sees further than men can see, _to suffer_ may be greater
than _to do_.  But have patience, Archie, lad.  He who has given you to
suffer now, may give you to do before you die.  You may have to fight
the battles of the Lord in high places.  Who knows?"

"That would be near as well as to fight with the dragoons: would it not,
Archie?" said Lilias, laughing.  "I'm sure it would be far easier."

"Maybe not, my lassie," said her aunt, gravely.  "There may be battles
fierce and sore that are bloodless battles; and Scotland may not be
through all her warfare yet.  But take the books, bairns, and let us be
thankful that, whatever may befall us or our land, we have always the
same word to guide us."

There was one drawback to the happiness of the children, this winter;
and it was felt for a time to be no slight one.  They could not go to
the kirk at Dunmoor, their father's kirk.  The winter rains had made the
way over the hills impassable; and the distance by the high-road was too
great for them.  They learnt in a little while to love the kindly voice
of the minister of Kirklands parish, and they soon got many a kindly
greeting from the neighbours at the kirk door.  But it was not the same
to Lilias as sitting in her father's seat, and listening to the voice of
her father's friend; and the getting back to the dear old kirk at
Dunmoor was always told over as one of the pleasant things which the
spring would bring back again.

At Christmas-time there came a new scholar to the school, and no small
stir did her coming make there.  For the first nine years of her life,
Elsie Ray had been the neglected child of a careless and indolent
mother.  At her death, Elsie had come to the neighbourhood of Kirklands,
to live with her grandfather and her aunt.  She thus passed from one
extreme of misfortune to the other.  From roaming at large in whatever
place and in whatever company she chose, she became at once the in-door
drudge of her aunt and the out-door drudge of her grandfather.  The
father and daughter agreed perfectly in one respect.  Their ruling
passion was the same,--the love of money.  It was believed in the
neighbourhood that they had laid by a considerable sum; but nothing
could be more wretched than their usual mode of life.  Their business
was the keeping of cows and poultry; and they found an efficient
assistant in the strong and energetic Elsie.  The life of constant
occupation which she was obliged to live with them was less dangerous to
an active-minded child than the idle, sauntering existence she had
passed with her mother.  But it left her no time for improvement; and
she seemed likely to grow up in ignorance.  The chance visit of an uncle
saved her from this sad fate.  Her grandfather so far attended to his
remonstrances as to send her, during three or four of the least busy
months, to Mrs Blair's school.

It would be difficult to imagine a more unpromising pupil than Elsie
appeared to be when Lilias first took her in hand; for to Lilias'
special care was she committed.  Wonder unspeakable to the children in
the school was the sight of a girl of Elsie's age who could not say the
catechism, which every Scotch child begins to learn almost in infancy.
But this was by no means the greatest defect in the education of the
new-comer; for it soon appeared that "great A" and "crooked S" were as
utter mysteries to her as any sentence in the catechism.  And their
wonder was by no means silent wonder.  More than once during the first
week was Elsie's ready hand raised to resent the mockery of her
tormentors.  It needed constant watchfulness on the part of Lilias to
keep the peace; and nothing but her earnest and gentle encouragement
would have prevented the girl from giving up, in disgust, the attempt to
learn to read.

This was only for a short time, however.  Her rapid improvement in
reading, as well as sewing, was a constant source of wonder and delight
to her young teacher; and soon the mocking of the children was silenced.

Nor was it in these things alone that improvement appeared.  Incited
partly by the precept and partly by the example of Lilias, a great
change soon became visible in her appearance and manners.  There was a
decided attempt at neatness in her rather shabby garments; and a look
from Lilias, or even the remembrance of her, had power to stay the
utterance of the rude or angry word ere it passed her lips.  Her
naturally affectionate disposition had been chilled by the life she had
been leading for the last few years, and her heart opened gratefully to
the kindness of Lilias.  Under her influence, her good qualities were
rapidly developed; and she soon became a great favourite with them all.

"It has made a great difference, Elsie's being here," Lilias often said;
and when one morning Elsie came with swollen eyes to say that she could
come no more, Lilias felt inclined to weep with her.  She comforted her,
however, telling her she would often come with Archie to see her while
she was feeding her cows on the hills, and that when the winter came
again her grandfather would let her come back to the school.  So Elsie
dried her eyes, and promised to let no day pass without trying to read
at least one whole chapter in the little Testament that Lilias gave her
at parting.

There was no lack of incidents to break the monotony of their life
during the winter.  Among the most frequent and by no means the least
interesting of these were the visits of Mrs Stirling.  She never passed
to or from Kirklands--where all her little purchases were made--without
calling; and a wonderful interest she seemed to take in all that
concerned the children, especially Lilias; and she always met with a
welcome.  Not that her visits were usually very cheerful affairs.  The
conversation generally turned upon the troubles of life--great and
small, and especially her own--those she had experienced and those she
dreaded.

Mrs Blair was often greatly amused by the earnest and grave attempts of
Lilias to make the world look brighter to poor Nancy.  Sometimes these
attempts took the form of sympathy, sometimes of expostulation; and more
than once there was something like gentle rebuke in the child's words
and tones.  She could not boast of success, however.  If Mrs Stirling
could not reply in words, she never failed to enter a protest against
the cheerful philosophy of Lilias, by a groan, or a shake of the head,
expressive of utter incredulousness.  She was never angry, however, as
Mrs Blair was sometimes afraid she might be.  Indeed, she seemed
greatly to enjoy the little girl's conversation; and sometimes her
visits were rather unreasonably lengthened.  Archie she never addressed
but in terms of the deepest commiseration.  At every visit she saw, or
seemed to see, that he was changing for the worse; and "poor, helpless
bairn!" or "poor pining laddie!" were the most cheerful names she gave
him.  Her melancholy anecdotes of similar cases, and her oft-repeated
fears that "he would never see the month of June," vexed and troubled
Lilias greatly.  At first they troubled Archie too; but he soon came not
to heed them; and one day, when she was in a more than usually doleful
mood, wondering what Lilias would do without him, and whether it would
save his life if his leg were cut off, he quite offended her by laughing
in her face.

"To think of me wasting good breath sympathising with you!" she
exclaimed.  "No, no!  You're not so near heaven as I thought you.
You're none too good to bide in this world a while yet.  To think of the
laddie laughing at me!"



CHAPTER FIVE.

SUMMER DAYS AT KIRKLANDS.

And so the winter passed away, and the spring came again,--the sunshine
and showers of April, more than renewing the delight of the children's
first weeks in Kirklands.  They had never been in the country in the
early spring before; and even "bonny Glen Elder," in the prime of
summer, had no wonders such as revealed themselves day by day to their
unaccustomed eyes.  The catkins on the willows, the gradual swelling of
the hawthorn-buds, the graceful tassels of the silver birch, were to
them a beauty and a mystery.  The gradual change of brown fields to a
living green, as the tender blades of the new-sown grain sprang up, was
wondrous too.  The tiny mosses on the rocks, the ferns hidden away from
other eyes, were searched for and rejoiced over.  No wild flower by the
wayside, no bird or butterfly, no new development of life in any form,
but won from them a joyful greeting.

And so there were again the pleasant wanderings among hills and glens,
and the pleasanter restings by the burn-side.  But they were not so
frequent now, for Lilias' life was a very busy one, and she could not,
even if she had wished, have laid aside the duties she had taken upon
herself.  But her freedom was all the sweeter when her duties were done;
and seldom a day passed without an hour or two of bright sunshine and
fresh air, and never before had the world seemed half so beautiful.

And Lilias had another source of happiness, better than birds or flowers
or sunshine: Archie was growing strong again.  Before May was out, his
crutches occupied a permanent place behind the cottage-door, and he was
away on the hill without them, drinking in life and health with every
breath of balmy air.  He was no longer the little cripple, painfully
following the footsteps of his sister, slackened to suit his lagging
pace.  Lame he was still, and always might be, and a slender
"willow-wand of a laddie," as Mrs Stirling still declared; but there
was a tinge of healthy colour on cheek and lip, and instead of the look
that reminded Lilias of the shadow creeping round to the gate of the
kirk-yard, there came back to his face and blithe look of earlier days.
His very voice and smile seemed changed; and his laughter, so seldom
heard for many a weary month, was music to his sister's ear.

Her joy in his returning health was altogether unmingled.  Sometimes,
when weary of the noise and confinement of school, it quite rested and
refreshed her to remember that he was out in the air and sunshine.  She
never murmured that he enjoyed it all without her; and when he came home
at night, telling, triumphantly, of the miles and miles he had walked
and the new sights he had seen among the hills, her delight was quite as
great as his.

At first Archie had no other interest in his wanderings than that which
pleasant sights and sounds and a consciousness of returning strength
gave him.  It was happiness enough to lie down in some quiet valley,
with only his beloved book as his companion, or, seated on some
hill-side, to gaze on a landscape whose loveliness has been the theme of
many a poet's song.

But pleasant sights and sounds, and even his beloved book, did not
always suffice him for companionship; and he soon found his way to more
than one shieling among the hills; and more than one solitary shepherd
soon learnt to look for the coming of the lad, "so old-fashioned, yet so
gladsome."  Sometimes he read to them from his favourite books; but
oftener they talked, and Archie heard many a legend of the countryside
from the lips that could tell them best.

His father and grandfather were well remembered by many whom they had
befriended in time of need; and the lad listened with delight to their
praises, and with equal delight repeated them to his aunt and Lilias
when he came home.

But there were other things, which Archie spoke of in whispers to his
sister when they were away together among the hills,--mysterious hints
of their cousin Hugh Blair, and of his mother's troubles with him before
he went away.  Not that he had much to tell about him, for there was
little said; but that little was enough to excite the curiosity and
interest of the children with regard to him; and they were never weary
of wondering why he went away, and where he was now, and whether he
would ever come home again.

"I wonder whether Aunt Janet thinks much about him?  I wonder why she
never names him to us?" said Archie, one day, after they had been
speaking about him.

Lilias was looking very grave.

"I'm sure she often thinks of him.  And I don't wonder that she seldom
speaks about him, when she can have little that is good to say."

"Maybe she thinks him dead," said Archie.

"No: I don't think that," said Lilias, sadly.  And after a moment she
added, "Last night the sound of her voice wakened me.  She was praying
for him; and it minded me of the `groanings that cannot be uttered.'  I
am afraid Aunt Janet has troubles we know nothing about."

Yes, Mrs Blair had troubles which the children did not know of, which
they could hardly have comprehended had they known; and, of late, fears
for Archie had mingled with them.  The remembrance of her utter failure
in guiding and governing her own son was ever present with her, filling
her with anxiety with regard to Archie's future.  She had no fears for
Lilias, nor when her brother was a cripple had she fears for him.  But
now that he was strong and well,--now that he must necessarily be
exposed to other influences, some of which could not but be evil, her
heart grew sick with a feeling of self-distrust as to her own power to
guide him.

It was this which made her listen with something like regret when Archie
told of new friends made among the hills.  His frank, open nature made
him altogether unsuspicious of evil in others; and, knowing him to be
easily influenced, she could not but fear that he might be led astray.
Night after night, when Archie came home, she listened earnestly to hear
the names of those with whom he had met; and, though she never heard
anything from the boy's lips or saw anything in his actions to make her
fear that he was changing for the worse, she could not feel quite at
ease concerning him.  For there ever came back to her the thought of her
son,--her wandering but still beloved Hugh; and many and earnest were
the prayers that ascended both for the guileless child and the erring,
sinful man, that through all the snares and temptations of life they
might be brought safe home at last.

She could not speak of her fears to Lilias.  She could not find it in
her heart to lay the burden of this dread upon the child.  She was so
full of the new happiness of seeing her brother strong and well again,
that she could not bear to let the shadow of this cloud fall upon her.
It would do no good; and she had really nothing but her fears to tell.
So in silence she prayed, night and day, that God would disappoint her
fears for Archie, and more than realise his sister's hope for him.

Mrs Stirling's visits to the cottage did not become less frequent as
the summer advanced, and her interest in Lilias seemed to increase with
every visit.  Not that she had ceased to torment the child with her
discontented repinings for the past, or her melancholy forebodings for
the future.  There was always some subject for comment ready; and Nancy
never let pass unimproved an opportunity to say something depressing.
But Lilias was learning not to mind her; and this was all the easier to
do, now that Archie's ill-health could no longer be her theme.

"Oh, ay! he's looking not so ill," said she, one day, while she stood
with Lilias at the gate, watching Archie, as he dug in the little
garden; "and he's not very lame.  If you could only be sure that it
wouldn't break out again.  Eh me! but he's growing to look awful like
his cousin Hugh.  It's to be hoped that he won't turn out as he has
done."

Lilias gave a startled look towards the house-end, where her aunt was
sitting, as she answered, hurriedly:

"Archie's like my father."

"You needna be feared that I'll speak that name loud enough for her to
hear," said Nancy, answering Lilias' look rather than her words.  "I
have more respect for her than that.  Poor body! she must carry a sore
heart about with her, for all she looks so quiet and contented like."

Lilias sighed.  The same thought had come into her own mind many and
many a time within the last few months.

"Did my cousin Hugh do anything so very bad?" she asked, looking
anxiously into Mrs Stirling's face.

"I dare say the folk that blame him most have done far worse things than
anything they can lay to his charge," said Nancy; "but there's little
doubt he did what made him fear to look on his mother's face again, or
wherefore should he not have come back?  His name has never, to my
knowledge, passed her lips from that day till this."

"But Donald Ross, up among the hills, told Archie that folk thought he
had 'listed for a soldier, and that he couldna come back again."

"Well, maybe not," said Nancy.  "Far be it from me to seek to make worse
what is bad enough already.  It's not unlikely.  But, as I was saying,
Archie's growing awfu' like him, and it is to be hoped he will not take
to ill ways.  You should have an eye upon him, Lilias, my woman, that he
doesn't take up with folk that `call evil good, and good evil.'  It was
that was the ruin of Hugh Blair,--poor laddie!"

"Archie sees no one among the hills that can do him harm," said Lilias,
hastily,--"only Donald Ross and the Muirlands shepherds, and now and
then a herd-laddie from Alliston.  He ay tells us, when he comes home,
who he has seen."

"Eh, woman!  I didn't mean to anger you," exclaimed Nancy.  "I declare,
your eyes are glancing like two coals.  But, if your aunt is wise,
she'll put him to some kind of work before long.  Laddies like him must
ay be about something; and if they are doing no good it's likely they'll
be doing evil.  Your aunt should know that well enough, without the like
of me to tell her."

"But Archie is such a mere child," remonstrated Lilias, forgetting for
the moment that it was Mrs Stirling, the grumbler for the countryside,
that was speaking.  "What ill can he get among the hills?  And, besides,
what work could he do?  It's health for him to wander about among the
hills.  It makes him strong."

"You're a child yourself for that matter," said Nancy; "and I'm thinking
what with those children's catechism and work, and one thing and
another, you do the most part of a woman's work.  And what's to hinder
your brother more than you?  It would keep him out of harm's way."

Lilias suffered this conversation to make her uncomfortable for a few
days, and then she wisely put it from her.  She would not speak to
Archie.  She would not even seem to distrust him.  And still the boy
came and went at his pleasure, enjoying his rambles and his intercourse
with his new friends, glad to go forth, and glad to come home again,
where the sight of his face always made sunshine for his sister.  And
Mrs Blair still went about with outward calm, but carrying within her a
heavy and anxious heart, as by the sighs and prayers of many a sleepless
night, Lilias well knew.

This was the child's one sorrow.  Sometimes she longed to speak to her
aunt about her cousin, and comfort her by weeping with her; but she
never had courage to broach the subject.  The wanderer's name had never
been mentioned between them; and Lilias had something like a feeling of
guilt upon her in hearing, as she could not but hear, the midnight
mourning of the stricken mother.

"And to think that this trouble has been upon her for so many years!"
she thought to herself, one night, as she lay listening to her aunt's
sighs and murmured prayers.  "It must be ten years at least; for I have
no recollection of my cousin Hugh.  And she has carried about this great
grief all that time alone, and has sought comfort from no one.  Oh, if I
could but comfort her!" for Lilias did not know that there are some
sorrows to which sympathy adds only bitterness.

Summer brought another pleasure to them all.  Their Sabbath journeys
over the hills to the kirk of Dunmoor were renewed; and, sitting in her
father's seat, and listening to the words of salvation from the lips of
her father's friend, Lilias grew more and more into the knowledge of
"the peace of God that passeth all understanding."  Although but a child
in years, early sorrow had taught her some lessons that childhood seldom
learns.  The heaviest of their sorrows did not press--upon them now.
There was not the poverty, the ceaseless toil, the constant and
sometimes vain struggle for bread.  She could speak of her father and
mother calmly now, and Archie was strong and well again.  And so the
look of patience which her face had worn when her aunt first saw it
lying on Archie's pillow in the dim attic room, was changing into a look
of quiet content.  Yet she was still unlike other children in many
respects, though the difference was rather to be felt than seen.

Good James Muir did not speak to her as he did to the manse children or
to Archie, but wisely and gravely, as he might have spoken to her aunt.
Annie Graham, though a full year the elder, much to her own surprise,
and to the surprise of all who knew her self-reliance, found herself
deferring to the opinions of Lilias Elder.  Not but that she enjoyed, as
much as any of them, the simple pleasures that were within their reach;
even little Jessie's never-absent laughter was not more full of
heartfelt mirth than hers.

But as they came to know Lilias better, they all felt that there was
"something beyond."  Even little Jessie said "she was like one that was
standing on a sure place, and was not afraid;" and so she was.

One Sabbath morning, in the kirk, Lilias was startled by the sight of
familiar faces in the minister's seat, faces associated in her mind with
a bright parlour, and kind words spoken to her there.  The quick smile
and whisper exchanged by the two lads told her that the Gordon boys had
recognised her too.

"That's my father's `bonny Lily,'" said Robert Gordon to young John
Graham, who was looking gravely at the boys carrying on a whispered
conference notwithstanding the reading of the psalm.

And, when the sermon was over, and Lilias, with her aunt and her
brother, stood in the kirk-yard, the boys pressed eagerly forward to
shake hands with her, and express their joy at seeing her again.

"They are Dr Gordon's sons, aunt," said Lilias, in answer to Mrs
Blair's look of surprise.  "I saw them that night."  And the vivid
remembrance of "that night" made her cheek grow pale.

"I hardly knew you,--you have grown so bonny," said Robert, gravely.
Lilias laughed.

"Come into the manse, and you will see your young friends without
interruption," said kind Mrs Graham.  "Come, Archie."

And so they passed a pleasant hour in the manse garden.  The Gordons had
come to pass their summer holidays with their cousins; and they would
often come over the hills to see her, they said.  They had a very
pleasant time sitting on the grass in the shadow of the fir-trees.  Even
young John Graham, as he paced up and down the walk with a book in his
hand, condescended to show a little curiosity as to the subject of their
conversation, so earnest did their tones become at last; and John Graham
was a college student, and a miracle of wisdom in his sister's eyes.  He
wondered if it was all "Sabbath talk" that engrossed them so much; and
his wonder changed to serious doubts, as his little sister Jessie's
voice rose above the voices of all the rest.

But wise John was mistaken this time.  The subject that engrossed them
so much was at the same moment engrossing good James Muir and his
brother elders on the other side of the kirk-yard wall.  It was the
sermon and the minister they were discussing.

Jessie was eloquent on the subject.  Of course there never was such a
preacher as her grandfather,--not even the great Dr Chalmers himself,
the child declared; and all the rest agreed.  Even Robert Gordon, whose
taste, if the truth must be told, did not lie at all in the direction of
sermons, declared that he had not been very weary that day in the kirk.
Jessie looked a good deal scandalised at this faint praise; but it was
much from Master Robert, if she had but known all.

Then the question was started whether John would ever preach as well;
and John had to pay the usual penalty of listeners, for all agreed that
this was not to be thought of, at least, not for a long time to come.

This was the beginning of more frequent intercourse between Lilias and
Archie and the manse children.  Lilias was not often with them at first,
for the "harvest-play" of the village children did not come so soon as
the town-boys' holidays, and she could seldom be prevailed upon to leave
her aunt alone in the school.  But Archie's company soon became
indispensable to the lads in their daily rambles among the hills.  He
had explored the country to some purpose; and not even the manse boys
knew so many places of interest as he did, and he was often their leader
in their long excursions.

It was a point of honour with Archie never to confess that he was tired
while he could stand; and it was only a fortunate chance that prevented
these long-continued wanderings from being an injury to him.  They went
one day to the top of the highest hill in the neighbourhood.  Archie, as
usual, led the way; and they had got well on their return, when he was
obliged to confess to himself (though not to his companions) that he
could go no farther.

They had just left the hills, and stood on the turnpike-road between
Dunmoor and Kirklands, the other lads to go to the manse, and Archie to
go home, a good two miles away yet.  It seemed to him that he never
could go so far; and, only waiting till the other lads were out of
sight, he threw himself down on the grass at the roadside, utterly
exhausted.  The sound of wheels startled him in a little time, and soon
John Graham, in the manse gig, made his appearance.  He drew up at the
sight of Archie, and, in some surprise, asked him what ailed him.

"Nothing," said Archie, rising painfully.  "We have been at the head of
the Colla Hill; and I'm afraid I'm tired: that's all."

"And that's enough, I think," said John; for the lad's limbs were
trembling under him.  "Really, these lads are very inconsiderate.  You
should not have let them lead you such a chase."

"It was me that led them," said Archie,--not exactly liking Master
John's tone.  "And I'll soon be rested again."

But the horse's head was already turned, and John's strong arm lifted
the weary boy to the seat at his side, and he was soon safely set down
at the cottage-door.  But it was some time before Archie appeared among
the boys again, so long that John, after taking his brother Davie
severely to task for his thoughtlessness, one fine morning walked over
the hills to see if Archie were really ill.

"Ill?  No!  What should make me ill?"  But Archie looked pale and weary,
in spite of his denial.  He was upon the turf seat at the end of the
house; and, sitting down beside him, John took up the book he had been
reading.  It was a volume of Flavel.

"Have you read much of this?"  John asked, wondering at his taste.  "Do
you like it?"

"I haven't read much of it to-day; but Lilias and I read it last winter
to my aunt, and I liked it well, not so well to read to myself, though,
as some others."

"What others?" asked John.

"Oh, the History of Scotland, and the Tales of the Covenanters, and some
books of poetry that my aunt has got.  But I like Flavel too.  Don't
you?"

"Oh, yes," replied John, smiling, and a little confused.  "To tell the
truth, I have not read much of him.  Tell me what you think of him.  Of
this, for instance."

And he read the quaint heading of a chapter in the book he held in his
hand.

It never came into Archie's mind that young John Graham was "just trying
him," as boys say; and, in perfect simplicity and good faith, he gave an
abstract of the chapter, with comments of his aunt's, and some of his
own upon it.  It was not very clear or very complete, it is true; but it
was enough to change considerably the expression of John's face as he
listened.

This was the beginning of a long conversation.  John Graham had laid out
for himself three hours of hard reading after his bracing tramp over the
hills; but it was past noon when he went in to see Mrs Blair before he
went away.  He did not think the morning wasted; though in general, like
all hard students, he was a miser respecting his time.  When he was
going away, he offered Archie any of his books, and said he would help
him to understand them while he stayed at home.

"That won't be long now, however," he added.  "But why don't you go to
school?"

"I should like to go to Dunmoor parish school with Davie; but my aunt
thinks it's too far."

"Well, I think, after your scramble to Colla's Head, and the ten good
miles besides, that you walked the other day, you might be able to walk
to Dunmoor school.  It is not far, if you were only stronger."

Oh, Archie was strong; quite strong enough for that, if only his aunt
and Lilias thought so; and maybe they might, if John would speak to them
about it.

And so it was arranged; and when John went back to college and the
Gordon boys went home, Archie found himself at David Graham's side,
under the firm and not ungentle rule of the Dunmoor parish schoolmaster.
Lilias' joy was scarcely less than his own; and the delight of
welcoming him home at night quite repaid her for his absence during the
day.

As for her, she began again the business of teaching with wonderful
cheerfulness, and went on with wonderful success.  Mrs Blair's office
of schoolmistress was becoming hers only in name, she declared; for
Lilias did all that was to be done, while she sat quietly in her
armchair, knitting or sewing, only now and then administering a word of
caution or reproof to the little ones about her.  The children loved
their young teacher dearly.  Not one of them but would have travelled
miles to do her a pleasure; and over two or three her influence for good
was very easily seen.

When the summer and autumn work was fairly over, Elsie Ray came back
again to the school; and Elsie was a very different girl now from the
shy, awkward, ill-clad creature who had come there a stranger last year.
Naturally affectionate, as well as bright, she had from the first
attached herself to Lilias in a peculiar manner, and, to please her, she
had done her utmost to overcome her faults and improve herself in every
way.  Her clothes, of her own making, were now as neat as they had been
before untidy.  Her leisure time during the summer's herding had not
been misemployed, and she was fast acquiring the reputation of being the
best reader, writer, and sewer in the school; and no small pride did she
feel in her acquirements.  In short, as Mrs Stirling declared, "she had
become a decent, purpose-like lass, and Lilias Elder should have the
credit of it."  Of the last fact Elsie was as well persuaded as Nancy
was; and her gratitude and devotion to Lilias were in proportion.  No
sacrifice would she have considered too great to give proof of her
gratitude to Lilias; and her goodwill stood her friend in good stead
before the winter was over.



CHAPTER SIX.

CLOUDS WITH SILVER LININGS.

Lilias' troubles were not over yet.  Even now a cloud was gathering,
little, indeed, at first, and distant, but destined to overshadow her
for many a weary month.  Indeed, there were two, as Lilias sometimes
thought, while she stood watching for her brother's home-coming beneath
the rowan-tree in the glen.  The way over the hills was hardly safe in
the darkness, and the days were growing short again, and Archie could
seldom get home by daylight now.  She began to fear that it would be as
their aunt had more than once hinted,--that he must stay at home till
spring.

For herself, Lilias would have liked nothing half so well as a renewal
of last winter's pleasures; but she was by no means sure that Archie
would agree with her.

"He has got a taste of the school, and nothing else will content him
now.  And, besides, so clever as the master says he is, it would be such
a pity to take him away just as he has well begun."

But how to help it was the question; and Lilias revolved it in her mind
so constantly that it quite depressed and wearied her at last, and a
feeling akin to despondency began to oppress her.  She did not speak to
Archie of any change.  He went and came, day by day, rejoicing in the
new sources of delight that his books and his school afforded, evidently
believing that his plans were settled for the winter; and Lilias would
not disturb him a day sooner than was necessary, and so she bore her
burden alone.  In a little while she found that she never need have
borne it at all.  The disappointment that she dreaded for Archie never
came; and this was the way it was averted.

It was Saturday afternoon,--a half-holiday in the school.  The children
had gone home, and there was quietness in the cottage.  Lilias had given
the last stroke of neatness to the little room.  The dinner-table was
set, and they were waiting for Archie.  Lilias went to the gate and
strained her eyes in the direction of the hill-path; and, with a slight
sigh of disappointment, she hurried towards the house again.  A strange
voice close by her side startled her.

"You needn't spoil your eyes looking for Archie to-day, for I have given
him leave to go with Davie to the manse, and I dare say Mrs Graham
winna let him want his dinner; and I'll take mine with you.  You can get
Archie any time, but it's not often that I am seen in any house but my
own.  You needn't look so disappointed."

Lilias' smile quickly chased the shadow from her face as she cheerfully
invited the schoolmaster to come in; and, stooping low, he entered.

Mrs Blair had known Peter Butler all his life, and she had often
received him in a very different place from the low room into which he
passed, but never with a more kindly welcome than she gave him now.  She
had none of that kind of pride which would make her shrink from a
necessary exposure of her poverty to eyes that had seen her prosperity;
and it was with no trace of embarrassment that she rose, and offered him
the armchair to rest himself in after his long walk; but he declined it
with respectful deference.

"Many thanks, Mrs Blair, ma'am," said he, seating himself on the end of
a form near the door.  Placing his hat beneath it, he took from his
pocket a black silk cap, and deliberately settled it on his head.

"You'll excuse me, ma'am: I have used myself to wear this in the school,
till it wouldna be safe to go without it.  At my time of life, health
mustna be trifled with, you ken."

Mrs Blair begged the master to make himself comfortable, and there was
a moment's pause.

"I have taken the liberty to give yon laddie Archie a play this
afternoon.  I would like to have a few words with you concerning him, if
you have no objection."

Mrs Blair eagerly assented, and Lilias' hand was arrested in the act of
lifting the dinner from the hearth to the table.  And she stood gazing
at the master with a look so entreating as slightly to discompose him.

"It's not ill I have to tell of him, lassie.  You need not look so like
frightened."

Lilias set down the dish in some confusion.

"And if you'll allow me to suggest, ma'am, you'll take your dinner while
it's in season.  My news will keep."

The master had dined before he left home; but, with a delicacy that
would have done honour to a man of greater pretension, he accepted Mrs
Blair's invitation as frankly as it was frankly given.  A humble meal it
was, and the master's eyes grew dim, remembering other days, as,
reverently lifting his cap from his broad, bald brow, he prayed for
God's blessing on the offered mercies.

During the meal, Mr Butler talked fluently enough on many subjects; but
when the dinner was fairly over, and Mrs Blair and Lilias sat still,
evidently waiting to hear what he had to say, he seemed strangely at a
loss for words, and broke down several times in making a beginning.  At
last he said:

"Well, Mrs Blair, the short and the long of it is this.  I have a
favour to ask from you.  You see, it's dull enough down at my house at
this time of the year, and I find it long sitting by myself when the
bairns have gone home.  I have a certain solace in my books, it's true;
but I begin to think there is some sense in the wise man's declaration,
that `much study is a weariness to the flesh.'  At any rate, it comes to
that at my time of life.  So I wish you would spare that laddie of yours
to me for awhile, and I'll promise you that what will be for my good
will not be for his ill.  That's what I have to say."

There was a moment's silence; and then Mrs Blair thanked him for his
proposal, and for the manner in which it had been made.  It was very
kind in him, she said, to put the matter in that way, as though the
obligation would be on his side.  But it would be a great interruption
to the quiet which she knew he valued so much, to have a lad like Archie
always coming and going about him, and she doubted whether it would be
right to accept his generous offer; though she feared the short days and
the distance by the road would keep Archie away from the school for a
few weeks at least.  The master listened with great attention, and said:

"To your first remark, Mrs Blair, ma'am, with all due deference, I must
say, I put it in that light because it's the true light, and I see not
well how I could put it in any other.  And as for his being an
interruption, if I should find him so at any time I would but to bid him
hold his peace or go to his bed, or I could send him over to the manse
to Davie yonder.  He'll be no interruption to him, I'll warrant.  And as
to his biding at home, it must by no means be.  He has just got well
begun in more things than one, and there is no saying what might be the
effect of putting a stop to it all.  He might not take to his books so
well again.  Not that I think that, either; but it would be an awful
pity to hinder him.  He'll do himself and me credit yet, if he has the
chance."

Lilias smiled at these praises of her brother, and Mrs Blair asked:

"Really and truly, Mr Butler, apart from your wish to help him for his
father's sake, do you wish for your own sake to have the boy to bide
with you for awhile?"

"Really and truly for my own sake.  I consider the obligation on my
side.  But just for the sake of argument, Mrs Blair, ma'am, we'll
suppose it to be otherwise.  Do you mind the little house that once
stood in Pentlands Park, and how many of my mother's dark days your
presence brightened there?  And do you not mind, when I was a reckless
laddie, well-nigh worsted in the battle of life, that first your father,
and then your brother, took me by the hand and warded off the sore blows
of poverty and neglect?  And do you think I'm too bold in seeking an
opportunity to show that I didn't forget, though I can never repay?  Is
it too great a favour for me to ask, Mrs Blair?"

The master's voice had nearly failed him more than once while he was
speaking.  He was very much in earnest; and to what he had said, Mrs
Blair could have only one reply.  Turning to Lilias, she said:

"Well, my dear, shall it be?"

The master had, with a few exceptions, a sort of friendly contempt for
all womankind.  With regard to "lassie bairns" there was _no_ exception;
and he was by no means pleased that the answer to his question should be
referred to one of these.  But Lilias' answer appeased him.

"Oh, yes,--surely, aunt.  It will be much for Archie's good.  And,
besides," she added, with a little hesitation, "I don't wonder that the
master wants Archie for his own sake."

"A sensible-like lassie, that," said the master to himself, looking at
her with some such curiosity as he would have looked at a strange beetle
in his garden-path, "that is wise like."

"Yes, if the master thought about Archie, as you do," said Mrs Blair.
"But have you counted the cost?  It will be a sad lonely winter to you
without your brother, Lily."

Lilias considered a moment, and drew a long breath.

"But it will be so much better for him; and he will come home
sometimes."

"That he shall," said the master, "at regular times, on which you shall
agree between you, and at no other,--that you need not be troubling
yourselves needlessly about him.  And he shall come in time, too, that
there need be no waste of good eyesight watching for him."

And so it was settled.  But Archie was by no means so delighted with the
arrangement as Lilias had anticipated.  He could hardly be persuaded
that he could not in the winter walk backwards and forwards over the
hills, as he had done in the fine days of summer and autumn.  But when
he was fairly settled in his little closet in the schoolmaster's quiet
home, with a table full of books, and time to read them, and his friend
Davie coming and going at his pleasure, he settled down with great
content.

He did not miss his sister as she missed him.  Poor Lilias!  Many and
many a time, during the first week of their separation, she asked
herself if she had indeed counted the cost.  She accused herself of
selfishness in regretting a change which was so much for his good, and
strove by attention to her duties to quiet the pain at her heart.

"I ought to be glad and thankful," said she to herself, again and
again,--"glad and thankful;" but the dull pain ached on, and the days
seemed like weeks; and when Saturday afternoon came at last, and Archie
rushed in, with a joyful shout, a few minutes before he was expected,
she surprised herself and him by a great flood of tears.

"Lilias, my child, what ails you?" said her aunt, while Archie stood
gazing at her in silent consternation.

It was some time before she found her voice to speak.

"It's nothing, aunt; indeed it's nothing, Archie.  I had no thought of
crying.  But I think my tears have been gathering all the week, and the
sight of you made them run over in spite of me."

"Lily," said Archie, gravely, "I won't go to the school again.  You have
been wearying for me, Lily."

It had been something more than "wearying,"--that dull pain that had
ached at Lilias' heart since they parted.  It was like the mother's
unappeasable yearning for her lost darling.  Her cheek seemed to have
grown pale and thin even in these six days.  Archie stood with one hand
thrown over her neck, while with the other he pushed back the fair hair
that had fallen on her face, and his eyes looked lovingly and gravely
into hers.  The tears still ran fast over her cheeks; but she forced
back the sobs that were ready to burst out again; and in a little while
she said, with lips that quivered while they smiled:

"Nonsense, Archie!  You must go to the school.  I haven't wearied much:
have I, aunt?  Everything has been just the same this week, except that
you didn't come home."

"A woeful exception," said her aunt to herself; but aloud she said,
"Yes; just the same.  We have missed you sadly; but we couldn't think of
keeping you at home on that account.  How do you like biding with the
master?"

"Oh, I liked it well, after the first night or two.  I have been twice
at the manse, and Davie has been with me; and the master has more books
than I could read in years and years; and I have had a letter from John
Graham.  It came with one to Davie."

And soon Lilias was listening to his history of the week's events with
as much interest as he took in giving it.  She strove by her
cheerfulness to make Archie forget her reception of him.  Indeed, it did
not require a very great effort to be cheerful now.  Her heart had been
wonderfully lightened by the shedding of the tears that had been
gathering all the week; and she soon laughed heartily over the merry
stories he had to tell about his sworn friend Davie Graham and the
master.

But Archie did not forget.  That night, as they stood by the rowan-tree,
looking down on the foaming waters beneath, he said:

"Lily, I don't believe Davie Graham's sisters love him as you love me."

"They wouldn't need.  Davie Graham's not like you.  Besides, they have
other brothers, and I have only you."

"Yes; that may make a difference.  But I'm sure I've been more trouble
to you than brothers generally are to their sisters.  I wonder you don't
tire of it, Lily."

"That's what makes me miss you so much.  Oh, Archie!  I thought the week
would never be done."

"It can't be right for me to bide at Dunmoor, when you miss me so much,
Lily.  I ought to give up the school for awhile, I think."

But Lilias would not hear of such a thing.  Stay from the school for her
sake!  No, indeed.  That would never do, when he needed to go so much,
and when she had been wishing for it for his sake so long!  And,
besides, it would be as much for her good as his, in the end.  She would
far rather have him a great scholar by-and-by than to have his company
now.

"If Aunt Janet were only well again!" she added, after a little pause;
and a shadow passed over her face as she spoke.

This was the cloud that had been gathering and darkening; and it was not
very long before that which Lilias had feared came upon her.  Her aunt
grew worse and worse; and, when Christmas-time came round, she was not
able to leave her bed.  Privations to which she had been little
accustomed during the greater part of her life were beginning to tell on
her now.  At first she was only feeble and incapable of exertion; but
her illness soon assumed a more decided form, and a severe rheumatic
attack rendered her, for a time, quite helpless.  She was always
cheerful, and strove to comfort Lilias by telling her that, though her
illness was painful, it was not dangerous, and when the spring came
round she might hope to be strong and well again.  But months must pass
before then, and the heart of Lilias sickened at the thought of all her
aunt must suffer.  Even Archie's absence came to seem but a small matter
in comparison with this greater trial.  By every means in her power she
strove to soothe her sufferings; but, alas! it was little she could do,
and slowly the winter passed away.

"Oh, so differently from the last!" thought Lilias, many a time.

It was long a matter of earnest discussion between them whether the
school should be kept up through the winter, or not.  Mr Blair was
fearful that it would be too much for the child; but, hoping day by day
to be better, and able to take her accustomed place among them, she
yielded to Lilias' entreaties, and consented that they should come for
awhile.

Lilias made a new discovery about this time.  After her aunt's illness
the housekeeping affairs fell altogether into her hands; and she was
startled to find how very small the sum was that must cover their
expenses from year's end to year's end.  The trifle received from the
school-children, paltry as it was, seemed quite too precious to be given
up.  Her aunt's comforts were few, but they must be fewer still without
this.  No: the school must be kept up, at any cost of labour and pains
to her.

"Let me just try it a while, aunt," she pleaded; "I am sure I can get on
with you to advise me; and the days will seem shorter with the bairns
coming and going."

And so her aunt yielded, though only half convinced that she did right.
There is no better promoter of cheerfulness than constant and earnest
occupation; and so Lilias found it.  She had no time during the day to
think of the troubles that seemed gathering over them, and at night she
was too weary to do so.  But, though weary in body, her patience and
energy never flagged.  Indeed, never were so many children so easily
taught and governed before.  The gentle firmness of their young teacher
wrought wonders among them.  Her grave looks were punishment enough for
the most unruly, and no greater reward of good behaviour could be given
than to be permitted to go on an errand or do her some other little
favour when school was over.

But her chief dependence for help was on Elsie Ray.  Her gratitude for
Lilias' kindness when she first came to the school was unbounded; and
she could not do too much to prove it.  It was Elsie who brought in the
water from the well and the fuel from the heap.  It was Elsie who went
far and near for anything which the varying appetite of the invalid
might crave.  Lilias quite learnt to depend on her; and the day was
darker and longer than usual, that failed to bring Elsie to the school.

Mrs Stirling's visits, too, became more frequent as the winter wore
away; and there was seldom a Saturday afternoon, be it raining or
shining, that failed to bring her to the cottage.  Nor was she by any
means unwelcome there.  For Nancy could be very helpful, when she willed
it; and, by some strange witchcraft or other, Lilias had crept into her
murmuring, though not unkind heart.  It is true that she always came and
went with the same ominous shake of the head, and the same dismal
prophecy that, "unless she was much mistaken, Mrs Blair would never set
her foot to the ground again;" but she strove in various ways to soothe
the pain of the sufferer, and her strong arms accomplished many a task
that Lilias in her weakness must have left undone.  Once, in Lilias'
absence from the cottage, she collected and carried off the used linen
of the family which had been accumulating for weeks, and quite resented
the child's exclamation of surprise and gratitude when she brought them
back done up in her very best style.  "She had done it to please
herself, as the most of folks do favours; and there need be no such ado
made about it.  If she had thought it a trouble, she would have left it
alone."

She was never weary of suggesting new remedies for Mrs Blair's
complaint, and grumbled by the hour if each in turn had not what she
called a fair trial.  Fortunately, her remedies were not of the "kill or
cure" kind.  If they could do no good, they could do little harm; and
Mrs Blair was generally disposed to submit to a trial of them.

In all her intercourse with Lilias there was a singular blending of
respectful tenderness with the grumbling sourness that had become
habitual to her.  The child's unfailing energy and patience were a
source of never-failing admiration to her; yet she always spoke to her
as if she thought she needed a great deal of encouragement, and not a
little reproof and advice, to keep her in the right way.

"You mustn't grumble, Lilias, my dear, that you have to bear the yoke in
your youth.  I dare say you need all you're getting.  Many a better
woman has had more to bear.  We all have our share of trouble at one
time or another.  Who knows but you may see prosperous days yet,--you
and your aunt together?  Though indeed that's more than I think," she
added, with the old ominous shake of the head; "but, grumble here or
grumble there, it will make little difference in the end."

Lilias would listen sometimes with a smile, sometimes with tears in her
wistful eyes, but always with a respect which was all the more grateful
to Nancy that it was not often given by those on whom she bestowed her
advice.

But notwithstanding the kindness of friends, and (what Lilias valued
even more) the weekly visits of Archie, the afternoon walks, and the
long evening spent in talking over all that the week had brought to
each, the winter passed away slowly and heavily.  To the children in the
school, Lilias always appeared in all respects the same; as indeed she
was during school-hours.  But when the little ones had gone home, and
her household duties were all over, when there was no immediate call for
exertion, her strength and spirits flagged.  Sitting in the dim light of
the peat fire, her weary eyes would close, and her work would fall upon
her lap.  It is true, the lowest tone of her aunt's voice would awaken
her again, as indeed it would at any hour of the night; but, waking
still weary and unrefreshed, no wonder that the power to step lightly
and speak cheerfully was sometimes more than she could command.  She was
always gentle and mindful of her aunt's comfort; but as the spring drew
near she grew quiet and grave, and her laugh, which had been such
pleasant music in the cottage, was seldom heard.

"You never sing now, Lily," said her aunt, one night, as Lilias was
busily but silently putting things to rights after the children had gone
home.

"Don't I?" said Lilias, standing still.

"Well, maybe not, though I had not thought about it.  I am waiting for
the birds to begin again, I suppose; and that won't be long now."

But spring seemed long in coming.  March passed over, and left matters
no better in the cottage.  Indeed, it was the worst time of all.  The
damp days and bleak winds aggravated Mrs Blair's illness, and increased
her suffering.  The young lambs and calves at home needed Elsie's care,
and she could seldom come now; and Lilias' burden grew heavier every
day.  Two rainy Saturdays in succession had presented Archie's coming
home; and time seemed to move on leaden wings.

"You have need of patience, Lily," said her aunt one night, as the child
seated herself on a low stool and laid her head down on the side of the
bed.

"Have I, aunt?" said she, raising herself quickly, for she thought her
aunt's words were intended to convey reproof.

"Yes; and God is giving it to you, my child.  It ought to be some
comfort to you, love, that you are doing good in the weary life you are
leading.  You are not living in vain, my child."

"I am quite happy, aunt," said Lilias, coming near, and speaking in a
low, wondering voice.

"Blessed with the peace _He_ gives His own through His dear Son our
Saviour: thank God for that!" said her aunt, as she returned her caress.

March passed and April too, and May came warm and beautiful, at last.
It brought the blessing so earnestly longed for by the weary Lilias,--
comparative health to her aunt.  Although she was not quite well yet,
she was no longer confined to her bed; and, with some assistance, could
walk about the house, and even in the little garden, now bright with
violets and daisies.  "She had aged wonderfully," Mrs Stirling said; as
indeed she had.  Lilias could see that, but she had great faith in the
"bonny summer days," and thought that now their troubles were nearly at
an end.

The return of spring had not made the schoolmaster willing to part with
Archie, and he was seldom at home more than once or twice a week.  But,
though Lilias still missed him, she had long ago persuaded herself that
it would be selfishness on her part to wish it otherwise.  It was for
Archie's good; and that was more than enough to reconcile her to his
continued absence.

But the pleasant May days did not make Lilias her old self again.  She
did not begin to sing with the birds, though she tried sometimes.  The
old burden was there, and she could not.  Often she accused herself of
ingratitude, and wondered what ailed her, that she could not be so
cheerful as she used to be.  The feeling of weariness and depression did
not wait now till the children had gone home.  Sometimes it came upon
her as she sat in the midst of them, and the hum of their voices would
die away into a dull murmur, and she would fall into a momentary
forgetfulness of time and place.  Sometimes it came upon her as an
inexpressible longing for rest and quiet, and to get away from it all
for a little while.

Her spirits were unequal; and it required a daily and unceasing effort
to go about quietly, as she used to do.  More than once she startled
herself and others by sudden and violent bursts of weeping, for which,
as she truly said, she could give no reason.  In vain she expostulated
with herself; in vain she called herself ungrateful and capricious.  The
weary weight would not be reasoned away.

At length the knowledge that she was overtired, and not so well as
usual, relieved her heart a little; but not very long.  She was ill; and
that was the cause of all her wretched feelings.  She was not selfish
and ungrateful.

She would be her old self again when she grew better.

Yes; but would she ever grow better? and when? and how?  Never in the
school.  She knew now that she had been doing too much for her
strength,--that the longing to get away from the noise and turmoil did
not arise from dislike of her work, but from inability to perform it.
And yet, what could she do even now?  Her aunt was not able to take her
old place in the school.  Must it be given up?  They needed the small
sum it brought in as much as ever they had done, and more.  Archie was
fast outgrowing the clothes so carefully preserved, and where could he
get more?  And there were other things, comforts which her aunt needed,
which must be given up, unless the school could be kept on.

She could not go to service now.  She could not leave her aunt.  If she
could only get something to do that could be done at home.  Or if she
could only be a herd-girl, like Elsie Ray, or keep the sheep of some of
the farmers, so that she might come home at night.  Then she would soon
get strong, and, maybe, have the children again after the harvest.  Oh,
if she only had some one to tell her what to do!  The thought more than
once came into her mind to write to Dr Gordon; but she did not.  He
could not advise her.  He could help them in no other way than to send
them money.  No: something else must be tried first.  Oh, if she only
knew what to do!

It would not have solaced Lilias much to know that the very same
thoughts were hourly in the mind of her aunt.  None of Mrs Blair's
friends knew the exact amount of her yearly income.  None of them knew
how small the sum was that the widow's little family had to maintain
them, or imagined the straits to which they were sometimes reduced.
Mrs Blair blamed herself for not having done before what now seemed
inevitable.  She ought to have asked assistance, alms she called it,
before it came to this pass with them; and yet she had done what she
thought was for the best.  She had hoped that her illness would not last
long,--that when spring came all would go on as usual again.

But this could not be now.  She had watched Lilias with great anxiety.
She had seen the struggle which it had sometimes cost her to get through
the days; and she knew that it could not go on long.  Her own strength
came back, but slowly.  She could not take Lilias' place; and the
children must go.  Some change must be made, even if it involved the
necessity of Lilias' leaving her for a while.  Indeed, it might have
been better, she sometimes thought, if she had never sought to keep the
child with her.  It would be hard to part from her now.

Lilias, in the meantime, had come to the same resolution.  The school
must be given up and she must tell her aunt and Archie; but first she
must think of something else, weeding, or herding, or going out to
service.  Suddenly a new thought presented itself.  It would not have
won for her much credit for wisdom in the parish, this idea of hers; but
Lilias only wondered that it had not occurred to her before.

"I'll ask Mrs Stirling's advice.  If she's not down before Saturday,
I'll go up and speak to her.  She'll surely know of something that I can
do."



CHAPTER SEVEN.

A FRIEND IN NEED.

Mrs Stirling's cottage stood not far from the high-road that leads to
Dunmoor, at the distance of a mile and a half from Kirklands.  It was
Nancy's own, and though humble and small, it was yet a very comfortable
abode; for her reputation for neatness and order was as well established
as her reputation for grumbling.  There were no evidences of a refined
taste about the place; but perfect order prevailed.  There was not a
weed in the garden without, nor a speck in the house within.  Every
article made of wood was as white as soap and sand or as bright as
turpentine and wax and much rubbing could make it; and every piece of
metal was dazzling to behold.

There were some relics of former grandeur, too; for Mrs Stirling had
not always lived in so humble a home.  Her husband had been prosperous
in a small way, but the property he left had been sadly mismanaged after
his death, or there would have been a larger portion for his widow.  But
she had enough to supply her simple wants; and there were those among
her neighbours so uncharitable as to say that she enjoyed the
opportunity for murmuring which its loss afforded, more than she could
have enjoyed the possession of twice her means.

"Mrs Stirling might be as happy as the day is long, with nobody to
trouble her from one year's end to the other," was the frequent remark
of many a toil-worn mother, fighting with poverty and cares, in the
midst of many children.  Yet none of them would have changed her life of
care for Nancy's solitary comfort.  Not that Nancy did not enjoy life in
her way.  She enjoyed greatly putting things to rights and keeping
things in order.  She enjoyed her garden and her neighbours'
good-natured envy on account of its superiority to their own.  And, much
more than people supposed, she enjoyed doing a good turn to any one who
really needed it.  It is true that her favours were, as a general thing,
conferred ungraciously; but even those who had the least patience with
her infirmities of temper availed themselves of her good offices,
acknowledging that, after all, "her bark was worse than her bite."

During the last few months of their intercourse, Lilias had seen
comparatively little of Mrs Stirling's characteristic ungraciousness,
and she felt very grateful to her for her many kindnesses during the
winter.  Unconsciously to herself, in seeking her advice she was making
the return which her friend could best appreciate.

Mrs Stirling was standing at the door, with her water-bucket in her
hand, as Lilias came in sight that Saturday afternoon.

"Eh! yon's Lilias Elder coming up the hill.  What can bring her here?  I
don't know the day when I have seen her so far from home.  Eh, but she's
a bonny, genteel little lassie!  There's no doubt of that."

It could not have been her apparel that called forth Mrs Stirling's
audible acknowledgment of Lilias' gentility; for her black frock was
faded and scant, and far too short, though the last tuck had been let
down in the skirt; and her little straw bonnet was not of this nor of
last year's fashion.  But Nancy's declaration was not a mistake, for all
these disadvantages.  Her greeting was characteristic.

"What made you come up the hill at that pace, you thoughtless lassie?
Anybody to see you might think you had breath enough and to spare; and,
if I'm not mistaken, you need it all."

Lilias laughed as she shook hands, and then sat down wearily on the
door-step.

"Ah, sit down and rest yourself.  You'll be going to meet your brother,
or, maybe, to take your tea at the manse?" said Mrs Stirling,
inquiringly.

"No: Archie's not coming home till the evening.  He's going to Broyra
with Davie Graham.  I'm going no farther to-day.  I came to see you,
Mrs Stirling.  I want you to advise me."

Nancy would not acknowledge to herself, and certainly she would not
acknowledge to Lilias, that she was a good deal surprised and flattered
by this announcement; and she merely said:

"Well, sit still and rest yourself first.  I'm going down to the burn to
get a drop of soft water to make my tea.  It makes it best.  Sit still
and rest; for you look weary."

Weary she was, too weary even to take in the lovely scene before her,
the hills and valleys in their fresh May garments.  Far away on the
dusty highway a traveller was approaching; and her eyes fastened
themselves mechanically upon him.  Sometimes he lingered and looked back
over the way he had come, and then hurried on, as though his business
would not brook delay.  Still watching him as he advanced, Lilias idly
wondered whence he came, and whither he was going, and whether it was
hope or fear that urged him to such speed.

Then she thought of the many travellers on the highway of life, weary
and ready to faint with the journey; and, closing her eyes, she strove
to send a thought over her own uncertain future.  She could see only a
little way before her.  The school must be given up; but what was to
come after, she could not tell.  She could think of no plan to bring
about what she most wished--the power to do something and yet stay at
home with her aunt.  Change and separation must come, and she could not
look beyond these; and then she sighed, as she had done many a time
before.

"Oh, if I were only strong and well again!"  So occupied was she with
her thoughts that she had not noticed the return of Mrs Stirling from
the brook, and was only made aware of it when she put a cut-glass goblet
filled with water in her hand.  A very beautiful goblet it was, no doubt
equal to the one for which the Roman emperor, in the story, paid a small
fortune; and you may be sure it was a great occasion in Mrs Stirling's
eyes that brought it from the cupboard in the corner.  No lips save
those of the minister had touched the brim for many a month.

But Lilias was too much occupied with her own thoughts to notice the
unwonted honour; and, strange to say, the slight was not resented.
Placing the glass in Lilias's hand, Mrs Stirling went into the house
again.

As Lilias raised it to her lips, her eyes fell again upon the
approaching stranger toiling along the dusty road, and her hand was
arrested.  He had again slackened his pace, and his face was turned full
upon Lilias as he drew near.  Upon it care or grief, or it might be
crime, had left deep traces.  Now it wore a wild and anxious look that
startled Lilias, as, instead of passing along the high-road, he rapidly
came up the garden-path towards her.

"Can you tell me if I am on the high-road to Kirklands?" he asked, as he
drew near.

"Yes; go straight on.  It is not much more than a mile from this place."

He did not turn to go when she had answered him, but gazed for a moment
earnestly into her face, and then said:

"Perhaps you can tell me--But no: I will not ask.  I shall know the
worst soon enough."

The look of pain deepened in his face, and his very lips grew pale as he
spoke.

"You are ill!" exclaimed Lilias, eagerly offering him the water she held
in her hand.  He drank a little, and, giving back the glass, thanked her
and went away.  But before he had gone far he turned again, and, coming
to Lilias, said in a low, hoarse voice:

"Child, I see the look of heaven's peace on your face.  Your wish must
bring good to one like me.  Bid me God-speed."

"God speed you!" said Lilias, reverently, and wondering much.  "And God
avert the evil that you dread!"

She watched while he continued in sight, forgetting, for the time, her
own troubles in pity for his.

"There are so many troubles in life," she thought; "and each one's own
seems worst to bear.  When will it all end?"

Poor, drooping Lily!  She had sat so long in the shadow of care that she
was in danger of forgetting that there were lightsome places on the
earth; and "When will it end?" came often to her lips now.  Not that she
was growing impatient under it; but she felt herself so weak to do or to
endure.

"If I only were strong and well again!  If God would only make me well
again, and show me what to do!"

Mrs Stirling's voice startled her at last.

"Come into the house, Lilias, my dear.  There's a cold wind creeping
round the hill, and the ground is damp yet.  You mustn't sit longer
there."

She placed a seat for her in the bright little kitchen.

"I won't put you into the parlour, for a fire's pleasant yet, May though
it be.  Sit down here, and I'll be through with my baking in a few
minutes."

The kettle was already singing on the hearth, and fresh cakes were
toasting at the fire.  After the usual Saturday tidying-up, the room was
"like a new pin;" and Lilias's eyes expressed her admiration as she
looked, about her.  Nancy hastened her work and finished it, and, as she
seated herself on the other side of the hearth, she said:

"Well, my dear, what were you thinking to ask me?"

In a few words Lilias told her all her trouble: how, though the spring
had come, her aunt was by no means well yet, nor able to take charge of
the school again; how she sometimes felt she was growing ill herself, at
least she was sometimes so weary that she feared she could not go on
long.  Indeed, she tried not to be weary, but she could not help it.
The feeling would come upon her, and then she grew dazed and stupid
among the children; and she must try and get something else to do.  This
was what she wanted to be advised about.

By a strong effort, in her capacity of adviser, Nancy was able to keep
back the words that came to the tip of her tongue:--"I knew it.  Anybody
might have seen the upshot.  To put a lassie like that to do the work of
a strong woman!  What could one expect?"

She did not speak aloud, however, but rose and mended the fire under the
tea-kettle, asking, as she sat down again:

"And what are you thinking of doing, my dear?"

"It's not that I'm really ill," continued Lilias, eagerly.  "I think
it's because I have been within doors so much.  If I could get something
to do in the open air, I should soon be as well as ever again.  I can't
go to service now, because I must stop at home with my aunt at night.
She can't be left.  But I thought if I could be a herd-girl like Elsie
Ray, or get weeding to do, or light field-work, or something--" And she
looked so eagerly and so wistfully that Nancy was fain to betake herself
to mending the fire again.  For there was a strange, remorseful feeling
stirring not unkindly at Nancy's heart.  To use her own words, she "had
taken just wonderfully to this old-fashioned child."  Her patience, her
energy, her unselfishness, her devotion to her aunt, had ever excited
her admiration and respect.  But that there was "a good thick layer of
pride" for all these good qualities to rest upon, Nancy never doubted.

"And why not?  Who has better right?  The lassie is bonny and wise, and
has good blood and a good name.  Few have so much to be proud of.  And
if Mrs Blair thinks it's more becoming in her brother's daughter to
teach children the catechism than to go out to common service, who can
blame her that mind her youth and middle age?"

Indeed, it had always been a matter of congratulation to Mrs Stirling
that this "leaven of pride" prevented Lilias's absolute perfection; but
now, to see "that delicate lassie, so bonny and gentle, more fit for the
manse parlour or the drawing-room at Pentlands than any other place,"--
to see her so utterly unmindful of pride or station, wishing so eagerly,
for the sake of those she loved, to become a herd-girl or a
field-labourer, quite disarranged all Nancy's ideas.  By another great
effort, she checked the expression of her feelings, and asked:

"And what does your aunt say to all this?"

"Oh, I have said nothing to her yet.  It would only trouble her; and if
I can get nothing else to do, I must keep the children till the
`harvest-play' comes.  That won't be so very long now."

"But, dear me, lassie! it must be that you have awful little to live on,
if the few pence you could earn would make a difference," said Nancy,
forgetting, in her excitement, her resolution to say nothing rashly.
"Surely it's not needful that you should slave yourself that way."

"My aunt would not like me to speak about it.  But I ought to do all I
can; and I would like herding best."

Nancy's patience was ebbing fast.

"Well, lass, you've sought advice from me, and you shall get it.  You're
just as fit for herding as you are for breaking stones.  Now, just be
quiet, my dear.  What do you ken about herding, but what you have learnt
beneath Elsie Ray's plaid on a summer's afternoon?  And what good could
you do your aunt,--away before four in the morning, and not home till
dark at night, as you would need to be?"

The last stroke told.

"I could do little, indeed," thought Lilias; but she could not speak,
and soon Nancy said:

"As for light field-labour, if such a thing was to be found in the
countryside, which is not my thought, your aunt would never hear of such
a thing.  Field-labourers canna choose their company; and they are but a
rough set at best.  Weeding might do better.  If you could have got into
the Pentlands gardens, now.  But, dear me!  It just shows that there's
none exempt from trouble, be they high or be they low.  Folk say the
Laird o' Pentlands is in sore trouble, and the sins of the father are to
be visited on the children.  The Lady of Pentlands and her bairns are
going to foreign parts, where they needn't think shame to be kenned as
puir folk.  There will be little done in the Pentlands gardens this
while, I doubt.  There's Broyra, but that is a good five miles away: you
could never go there and come back at night."

"But surely there's something that I can do?" said Lilias, entreatingly.

"Yes, there's just one thing you can do.  You can have patience, and sit
still, and see what will come out of this.  If I were you, and you were
me, you could, I don't doubt, give me many a fine precept and promise
from the Scriptures to that effect.  So just take them to yourself, and
bide still a while, till you see."

"I'll have to go on with the school yet," said Lilias, quietly.

"No, no, my lass: you'll do no such thing as that, unless you're tired
of your life.  You have been at that work over-long already, or I'm
mistaken.  Go into the house and look in the glass.  Your face will
never be paler than it is at this moment, Lilias Elder, my dear."

"I'm tired," said Lilias, faintly, her courage quite forsaking her, and
the tears, long kept back, finding their way down her cheeks.

"Tired!  I'll warrant you're tired; and me, like an old fool, talking
away here, when the tea should have been ready long since."  And Nancy
dashed into her preparations with great energy.  The tea was made in the
little black teapot, as usual; but it was the best tray, and Nancy's
exquisite china, that were laid on the mahogany stand brought from the
parlour for the occasion; for Nancy seemed determined to do her great
honour.  By a strong effort, Lilias checked her tears after the first
gush, and sat watching the movements and listening to the rather
unconnected remarks of her hostess.

"It's not often they're taken down, except to wash," she said, as with a
snowy napkin she dusted the fairy-like cream-pot.  "There's but few folk
of consideration coming to see the like of me.  Young Mr Crawford
doesn't seem to think that I belong to him,--maybe because I go so often
to Dunmoor kirk.  He hasn't darkened my door but once yet, and he's not
like to do it now.  They say he's to be married to one of Fivie's
daughters; and I mind Fivie a poor herd-laddie.  Eh me! but the Lord
brings down one and puts up another!  To think of the Lady of Pentlands
having to leave yon bonny place!  Who would have thought it?  This is
truly a changeful scene.  Folk must have their share of trouble at one
time or other of their lives.  There was never a truer word said than
that."

"Yes," said Lilias, softly: "it is called a pilgrimage,--a race,--a
warfare."

Nancy caught the words.

"Ay, that's a good child, applying the Scripture, as you ought to do.
But you can do that at your leisure, you know.  Sit by the table and
take your tea.  I dare say you need it."

And indeed Lilias, faint and weary, did need it.  She thought she could
not swallow a crumb; but she was mistaken.  The tea was delicious; for
Mrs Stirling was a judge of tea, and would tolerate no inferior
beverage.

"I'm willing to pay for the best; and the best I must have," was the
remark that generally followed her brief but emphatic grace before meat;
and it was not omitted this time.  "It will do you good, Lilias, my
dear."

And it did do her good.  The honey and cakes were beyond praise, and
Lilias ate and was refreshed.  When the tea was over, Mrs Stirling
rather abruptly introduced the former subject of conversation.

"And what were you going to do with your brother when you made your fine
plans for the summer?" she asked.

"Archie's at the school, you know," answered Lilias, shrinking rather
from Nancy's tone and manner than from her words.

"Yes; he's at the school just now.  But he wasn't going to stop at the
school, surely, when you went to the herding?"

"Oh yes; he is far better at the school."

"Ay, he's better at the school than playing.  But wherefore should not
he go to the weeding or the herding as well as you?"

"Archie!  Why, he's but a child!  What could he do?"

"And what are you but a child?" asked Nancy, smiling.  "I'm thinking
there is little over the twelve months between you."

"But Archie never was strong.  It would never do to expose him to all
kinds of weather or to fatigue.  Don't you mind such a cripple as he was
when we came here?  You used to think he wouldn't live long.  Don't you
mind?"

"Yes, I mind; but he did live, and thrive too; and he's the most
life-like of the two to-day, I'm thinking.  Fatigue, indeed! and he
ranging over the hills with that daft laddie Davie Graham, and playing
at the ball by the hour together!  What should ail him, I wonder?"

"But even if Archie were strong and well, and could gain far more than I
can, it would yet be far better for him to be at the school.  A man can
do so little in the world if he has no education; and now is Archie's
time to get it."

"Well, it may be.  And when's your time coming?" asked Nancy, drily.

"Oh, it is quite different with me," said Lilias, with a feeble attempt
at a laugh.  "A woman can slip through the world quietly, you know.  I
shan't need learning as Archie will.  And, besides, I can do a great
many things; and I can learn though I don't go to the school."

"Learn, indeed! and slip through the world quietly!" exclaimed Mrs
Stirling, with an expression of mingled pity and contempt.  "These may
be your doctrines, but they're not mine.  But it's easy seen what will
be the upshot of this.  It's just your aunt and your father over again.
She would have laid her head beneath Alex Elder's feet, if it would have
pleasured him; and you are none behind her.  Such ways are neither for
your good nor his.  There are plenty of folk that'll say to-day that
your father would have been a stronger man if he hadn't been so much
spared as a laddie."

"If Archie grows up to be such a man as my father was, I shall have no
more to wish for him!" exclaimed Lilias, rising, with more of spirit in
her voice and manner than Mrs Stirling had ever witnessed there before.

"Eh, sirs! did you ever hear the like of that in all your born days?"
(lifting her hands as if appealing to an invisible audience).  "As
though I would say a word to make light of her father!  It's well-known
there were few left like him in the countryside when he went away.  And
for her to put herself in such a passion!  Not that I'm caring, Lilias,
my dear.  I think it has done you good.  I haven't seen you with such a
colour in your face this good while.  But it ill becomes you to be
offended with the like of me."

"I'm not angry.  I didn't mean to be angry," said Lilias, meekly enough
now; "but I can't bear to think you should suppose I would do anything
that is not for Archie's good.  I'm sure I wish to do what is right."

"I'm as sure of that as you are," said Nancy; "but Lilias, my dear, you
must mind that it's not the sapling that has the closest shelter that
grows to be the strongest tree.  With you always to think and do for
him, your brother would never learn to think and do for himself.  It is
not real kindness to think first of him.  You must let him bear his
share of the burden."

"But he's such a child," said Lilias; "and he was never strong,
besides."

"Now, only hear her!" exclaimed Nancy, again appealing to an invisible
audience.  "You would think, to hear her speak, she was three-score at
least.  Lilias Elder, hear what I'm saying to you.  You are just taking
the best way to ruin this brother of yours, with your petting.  All the
care that you are lavishing on him now, he'll claim as his right before
long, and think himself well worthy of it, too.  Do you not wonder
sometimes, that he is so blithe-like, when you have so much to make you
weary?  I doubt the laddie is overfull of himself."

"You are wrong, Mrs Stirling!" exclaimed Lilias, the indignant colour
again flushing her face.  "Archie is not full of himself.  He would do
anything for my aunt or me.  And why should he not be blithe?  I'm
blithe, too, when he is at home; and, besides, he doesna know all."

The thought of what that "all" was--the struggle, the exhaustion, the
forced cheerfulness--made her cheek grow pale; and she sat down again,
saying to herself that Nancy was right, and that, for a while at least,
she must rest.

"No; and he'll never ken as much as is for his good, if it depends on
you.  But he'll hear something ere he's many days older."

"Mrs Stirling," said Lilias, rising, and speaking very quietly now,
"you must not meddle between me and my brother.  He is all I have got;
and I know him best.  He never was meant for a herd-boy or a
field-labourer.  He must bide at the school; and he'll soon be fit for
something better; and can you not see that will be as much for my good
as his?  I must just have patience and wait; and you are not to think
ill of Archie."

"Me think ill of him!  No, no; I think he's a fine laddie, as his father
was before him, and that makes it all the more a pity that he should be
spoiled.  But if you'll promise to be a good bairn, and have patience
till you are rested and quite strong again, and say no more about your
fine plans till then, I'll neither make nor meddle between you.  Must
you go?  Well, wait till I cover the fire with a wet peat, and I'll go
down the brae with you.  I dare say you are all right; your aunt will be
wearying for you."

As Nancy went bustling about, Lilias seated herself again upon the
door-step.  The scene was changed since she sat there before; but it was
not less lovely with the long shadows upon it than it was beneath the
bright sunshine.  It was very sweet and peaceful.  The never-silent
brook babbled on closely by, but all other sounds seemed to come from a
distance.  The delicate fringes of young birches waved to and fro with a
gentle, beckoning motion; but not a rustle nor a sigh was heard.

Yes, it was very sweet and peaceful; and as she let her eyes wander over
the scene, Lilias had a vague feeling of guilt upon her in being so out
of tune with it all.  Even in the days when she and Archie used to sit
waiting, waiting for their weary mother it had not been so bad.  She
wondered why everything seemed so changed to her.

"I suppose it is because I'm not very well.  I mind how weary and
restless Archie used to be.  I must have patience till I grow stronger.
And maybe something will happen that I'm not thinking about, just as
Aunt Janet came to us then.  There are plenty of ways beyond my
planning; and the Lord has not forgotten us, I'm sure of that.  I must
just wait.  There is nothing else I can do.  There!  I won't let another
tear come to-night, if I can help it."

She did her best to help it, for Mrs Stirling came bustling out again,
and they set off down the brae.  She had leisure to help it, too; for
from the moment the great door-key was hidden in the thatch, till they
paused beside the stepping-stones, she did not need to speak a word.
Nancy had all the talk to herself, and rambled on from one thing to
another, never pausing for an answer, till they stood beside the brook.
Here Nancy was to turn back.

"And now, Lilias, my dear, you'll mind what I have been saying to you,
and that you have promised to have patience?  It winna be easy.  You
have ay been doing for your aunt and your brother; and the more you had
to do the better you liked it.  But it's one thing to do, and it's
another thing to sit with your hands tied and see them needing the help
you canna give.  I doubt you may have a sorer heart to carry about with
you than you have kenned of yet.  No, that I'm feared for you in the
end.  And, though it's no pleasant thing to ask favours, I have that
faith in you that I would come to you, and wouldna fear to be denied.  I
ken you would have more pleasure in giving than in withholding; and I
would take a gift from you as freely as I ken it would be freely given."

She paused a moment, and Lilias tried to say that indeed she might trust
her, for it would give her more pleasure than she had words to tell, to
be able to do anything for so kind a friend.

"As to that, we'll say nothing," said Nancy, drily.  But suddenly,
changing her tone and manner, she added, "What I have to say is this.
You'll not refuse to me what I wouldna refuse to you, you that are far
wiser and better than I am, or ever expect to be?  What's the use of
having friends if you canna offer them a helping hand in their time of
need?  And mind, I'm no giving it," she added, opening her hands and
showing three golden sovereigns.  "There's no fear but I'll get them
back with interest.  There's nine-and-twenty more where these came from,
in the china teapot in the press; though that's neither here nor there.
And, Lilias, my dear, no soul need ever know."  The last words were
spoken beseechingly.

Lilias did not refuse the gift in words.  She had no words at her
command.  But she shut Nancy's fingers back upon the gold, and, as she
did so, she stooped and touched the brown wrinkled hand with her lips.

"Indeed, it is not pride," she said, at last.  "You must not think it's
pride.  But I am only a child; and it is my aunt who must accept and
thank you for your kindness."

Nancy's face was a sight to see.  At first she could have been angry;
but her look changed and softened strangely at the touch of Lilias's
lips upon her hand.

"My dear," said she gently, "it's easy to say `my aunt,' but it is you
who have borne the burden for her this while, poor helpless body!"

"Yes," said Lilias, eagerly.  "Just because she is helpless, we must
consider her the more; and she might not be pleased at my speaking to
you first.  But if we really need it, we will come to you; for you are a
true friend.  And you won't be angry?" she added, wistfully, as she held
out her hand for good-bye.

"Angry with you!  My little gentle lammie!"

Her tones, so unlike Nancy's usually sharp accents, brought back the
child's tears with a rush, and she turned and ran away.  Nancy stood
watching her as she went over the stepping-stones and up the bank, and
she tried to walk quietly on.  But as soon as she was out of sight she
ran swiftly away, that she might find a hiding-place where she could cry
her tears out without danger of being seen.

"It's the clearing-shower, I think; and I must get it over before I go
home.  If Archie were to see me crying, I should have to tell him all;
and I'm sure I don't know what would happen then."

As the thought passed through her mind, a footstep sounded on the rocky
pathway, and her heart leaped up at the sound of her brother's voice.
In a moment he was close beside her.  She might have touched him with
her outstretched hand.  But the last drops of the clearing-shower were
still falling.

"And I'm not going to spoil his pleasant Sabbath with my tears," she
said to herself.  So she lay still on the brown heather, quite unseen in
the deepening gloaming.

"Lily!" cried Archie, pausing to listen--"Lily!"  He grasped a branch of
the rowan-tree, and swung himself down into the torrent's bed.  "Lily!
Are you here, Lily?"

She listened till the sound of his footsteps died away, and then swung
herself down as he had done.  Dipping her handkerchief into the water of
the burn, she said to herself, as she wiped the tear-stains from her
face, "I'll be all the brighter to-morrow for this summer shower."  And
she laughed softly to herself as she followed the sound of her brother's
voice echoing back through the glen.



CHAPTER EIGHT.

THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN.

"I have stayed too late.  They'll be wondering what has kept me," said
Archie to himself, as he saw the firelight gleaming from the
cottage-window.  "I wonder where Lily can be, that she didn't come to
meet me?  I wonder if anything has happened?"

Something had happened.  He paused a moment at the door to listen, as a
strange voice reached his ear.  It was a man's voice.  Going in softly,
he saw his aunt in her accustomed seat, and close beside her, with his
head bowed down on his hands, sat a stranger.  There was a strange look,
too, on his aunt's face, the boy thought, and the tears were running
down over her cheeks.  Wondering and anxious, he silently approached
her.

"Archie, are you come home?" said she, holding out her hand to him as he
drew near.  "Hugh, this is your uncle's son.  Archie, this is your
cousin Hugh come home again."

With a cry Archie sprang forward--not to take his cousin's offered hand,
but to clasp him round the neck; and, trembling like a leaf, the
returned wanderer held him in a close embrace.

"I knew you would come back," said Archie at last through his tears.  "I
always told Lilias you would be sure to come back again.--Oh, Aunt
Janet, are you not glad?--And you'll never go away again?  Oh, I was
sure you would come home soon!"

Even his mother had not received her prodigal without some questioning,
and the sudden clasping of Archie's arms about his neck, the perfect
trust of the child's heart, was like balm to the remorseful tortures of
Hugh Blair, and great drops from the man's eyes mingled with the boy's
happy tears.

"Archie," said his aunt after a little time, "who spoke to you of your
cousin Hugh?"

"Oh, many a one," answered Archie, as he gently stroked his cousin's
hair.  "Donald Ross, and the Muirlands shepherds, and Mrs Stirling."
And then he added, in a hushed voice, "Lilias heard you speak his name
in your prayers often, when you thought her sleeping."

Hugh Blair groaned in bitterness of spirit.  The thought of his mother's
sleepless nights of prayer for him revealed more of the agony of all
those years of waiting than her lips could ever utter.  He thought of
this night and that in his career of reckless folly, and said to
himself: "It may have been then or there that my name was on her lips.
O God, judge me not in Thine anger!"

The words did not pass his lips, but the look he turned to his mother's
face was a prayer for pardon, and she strove to smile as she said
hopefully, "It is all past now, my son.  God did not forget us--blessed
be His name!"

"And Lily!" exclaimed Archie, starting up at last.  "Lily! where are
you?  Oh, will she not be glad?"

"I am here, Archie.  What has happened?" said Lilias at the door.

"Cousin Hugh has come home again," he whispered, drawing her forward;
and then she saw the stranger who had taken the water from her hand.  He
knew her, too, as the child who had bidden him "God-speed!"

"Ah! is this the wee white Lily of Glen Elder?" he said softly.

Lilias's greeting was very quiet.

"I am glad you are come home again, Cousin Hugh," said she, as she gave
him her hand; and then she looked at her aunt.

"God has been better to me than my fears.  He has given me the desire of
my heart--blessed be His name!" whispered Mrs Blair, as Lilias bent
over her.

All that it is needful to give here of Hugh Blair's story may be given
in a few words.  He had not enlisted as a soldier, as had been at first
believed.  But, in an hour of great misery and shame, he had gone away
from home, leaving behind him debt and dishonour, fully resolved never
to set foot in his native land again till he had retrieved his fortunes
and redeemed his good name.

To redeem one's good name is easily resolved upon, but not so easily
accomplished.  He took with him, to the faraway land to which he had
exiled himself, the same hatred of restraint, the same love of sinful
pleasures, that had been his bane at home.  It is true he left the
companions who had led him astray and encouraged him in his foolish
course; but, alas! there are in all lands evil-doers enough to hinder
the well-doing of those who have need to mend their ways.  He sinned
much, and suffered much, before he found a foothold for himself in the
land of strangers.

Many a mother's prayers have followed a son into just such scenes of
vice and misery as he passed through before God's messenger, in the
shape of sore sickness, found him.  Alone in a strange land, he lay for
weeks dependent on the unwilling charity of strangers.  The horrors of
that fearful illness, the dreariness of that slow convalescence, could
not be told.  Helpless, homeless, friendless, with no memories of the
past which his follies had not embittered, no hopes for the future which
he dared to cherish, it was no wonder that he stood on the brink of
despair.

But he was not forsaken utterly.  When he was ready to perish, a
countryman of his own found him, and, for his country's sake, befriended
him.  He took him from the poisoned air of a tropical city away to the
country, amid whose hills and slopes reigns perpetual spring; and here,
under the influences of a well-ordered home, he regained health both of
body and of mind, and found also in his countryman and benefactor a firm
and faithful friend.

Now, indeed, he began life anew.  Bound by many ties of gratitude to his
employer and friend, he strove to do his duty, and to honour the trust
reposed in him; and he did not strive in vain.  During the years that
followed, he became known as an honourable and a successful man; and
when at last, partly for purposes of business and partly with a view to
the re-establishment of his health, he determined to return home for a
time, he was comparatively a man of means.

He had all this time been doing one wrong and foolish thing, however.
He had kept silence towards his mother.  He had not forgotten her.  He
made many a plan, and dreamed many a dream, of the time when, with all
stains wiped from his name and his life, he would return to make her
forget all that was painful in the past.  He had never thought of her
all these years but as the honoured and prosperous mistress of Glen
Elder.  It had never come into his mind that, amid the chances and
changes of life, she might have to leave the place which had been the
home of her youth and her middle age.

When he returned, to find a stranger in his mother's place, it was a
terrible shock.  All that he could learn concerning her was that she had
had no choice but to give up the farm, and that on leaving it she had
found a humble but welcome shelter in a neighbouring county; but whether
she was there still, or whether she was even alive, they could not tell
him.

As he stood before the closed door of what had once been his home, it
seemed to him that a mark more fearful than that of Cain was upon him.
Heart-sick with remorse, he turned away.  Not daring to make further
inquiries, lest he might learn the worst, he went on, past familiar
places, with averted eyes, feeling in his misery that the guilt of his
mother's death must rest upon his sinful soul unless he might hear her
living lips pronounce the pardon of which he knew himself to be
unworthy.

God was merciful to him.  He opened the door of the humble cottage by
the common, to inquire his way; and there, in the old armchair so well
remembered, sat his mother, with her Bible on her knee.  She did not
know him, but she gave him kindly welcome, bidding him sit and rest, as
he seemed weary.  She did not know him till she felt his hot tears
dropping on her hands, and heard him praying for pardon at her feet.

It would do no good to tell what passed between the mother and the son.
That the meeting was joyful, we need not say; but it was very sorrowful,
too.  For years of sin and years of suffering must leave traces too deep
for sudden joy to efface.  Hugh Blair had left his mother in the prime
of life, a woman having few equals as regards all that in a woman is
admired.  He returned to find her feeble, shrunken, helpless, with the
hair beneath her widow's cap as white as snow.  He had redeemed his good
name; he had returned to surround her last days with comfort; he had
brought wealth greater than had blessed her most prosperous time.  But
for all those years of poverty and doubt and anxiety, those years which
had made her old before her time, what could atone for these?  And as
for her, even amid her thankful gladness the thought would come, "How
shall I ever learn to put trust in him, after all these years?  Can his
guileless child's heart come back again to him?"

Oh, yes! the meeting was sorrowful, as well as glad.

With the joy of Archie and Lilias no misgiving mingled.  Their cousin
Hugh had come home again.  That was enough for them.  In his youth he
had done many foolish things, and maybe some wrong things, they thought.
He had sinned against God and his mother.  He had left his home, like
the prodigal, choosing his own will and way rather than do his duty.
But now, like the prodigal, he had come home repenting; and the best
robe and the ring for his hand these happy children made ready for him.

"There is joy among the angels to-night, Lily," said Archie, coming back
to whisper it to her, after she thought he was asleep.

"Yes: `this my son was dead, and is alive again; was lost and is
found,'" answered Lilias softly.

"And now Aunt Janet's midnight prayers will be changed to
thanksgivings," was the last thought of the weary child, as she lay down
that night.  Her first thought in the morning was that her aunt would
not want the children for a few days at least, now that her cousin had
come home, and she would get rest and be well again.  Her next was that
Mrs Stirling's golden sovereigns might stay with the other
nine-and-twenty in the china teapot; and a curious feeling of regret
mingled itself with the pleasure of the thought.

"I almost wish that I had taken them,--just to show her that it wasn't
pride; but I dare say Hugh would be better pleased as it is.  I wonder
if he is strong and ready at doing things?  He doesn't look very strong;
but he is a man and will know how to manage things; and my aunt will not
be anxious and cast down any more.  And now I see how foolish I was to
vex myself with what was to happen to us.  I might have known that the
Lord was caring for us all the time.  `Yet have I not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.'"  Lilias repeated the words with
a sudden gush of happy tears, hiding her face in the pillow, lest her
aunt should see.

Hugh and Archie went over the hills to the kirk at Dunmoor that day; but
Lilias dreaded the long walk a little, and she dreaded a great deal the
wondering looks and curious questioning which the sight of the stranger
would be sure to call forth.  So she went to the kirk close at hand,
saying nothing to the people who spoke to her of her cousin's return,
lest their coming and going might break the Sabbath quiet of her aunt.
And a very quiet afternoon they had together.  Her aunt sat silent,
thinking her own thoughts; and Lilias sat "resting," she said, with her
cheek on her little Bible, and her eyes fixed on the faraway clouds,
till the cousins came home again.

As for Archie, it was with a radiant face, indeed, that he went into the
full kirk, holding the hand of his cousin Hugh.  Some in the kirk
remembered him, others guessed who he might be; and many a doubtful
glance was sent back to the days of his wayward youth, and many an
anxious thought was stirred as to whether his coming home was to be for
good or for ill.

It was well for him that he had learnt to hide his thoughts from his
fellow-men, to suffer and give no sign of pain, or he would have
startled the Sabbath quiet of the kirk that day by many a sigh and
bitter groan.  Sitting in his old familiar place, and listening to the
voice which had taught and warned his childhood, it came very clearly
and sharply before him how impossible it is to undo an evil deed.
Closing his eyes, he could see himself sitting there a child, as his
young cousin sat now at his side; and between this time and that lay
years darkened by deeds which, in the bitterness of his remorse and
self-upbraidings, he said to himself "could never be outlived--never
forgotten."  These years had been lost out of his life--utterly lost for
all good; but, oh, how full of sin to him, of pain to others!  His sin
might be forgiven, washed away in that blood which cleanseth from all
sin.  But could his mother, could others, who had suffered through it,
ever quite outlive the shame and pain?

It seemed to him that the grave, earnest faces about him were settling
themselves into sternness at the stirring of the same bitter memories
and accusing thoughts; and he would fain have escaped from the glances,
some of them kind and others half averted, that followed him into the
kirk-yard when the service was over.  But he could not escape.

Who could resist the look on Archie's joyful face, so frankly
challenging a welcome for the returned wanderer?  Not James Muir, nor
the master, nor scores besides.  Not even Nancy Stirling herself, when
Archie, sending a smile up into her face, said--

"This is my cousin Hugh come home again."

"Oh, ay! he's come home again.  I kenned him when he was a guileless
laddie, like yourself, Archie, man," said Nancy, not sparing her little
prick to the sore heart.  "And where's your sister to-day?  Is your aunt
so ill yet as to need to keep her from the kirk?" she added, with the
air of finding a grievance in Lilias's absence.  "Or is the lassie not
well herself?  She looked weary and worn enough when I bade her
good-night at the stepping-stones in the gloaming.  You're not come home
over soon, Maister Hugh.  It's time your mother had some one to care for
her besides these bairns."

Archie looked indignant; but Hugh said gravely and gently--

"You are right, Mrs Stirling.  You have been a kind friend to my mother
and my cousin Lilias, they tell me, and I thank you from my heart."

Nancy looked not a little discomfited at this unexpected answer.

"It would have been liker Hugh Blair to turn on his heel and go his own
way," said she afterwards; "but it may be that many a thing that was
laid to his door in the old days belonged less to him than to those who
beguiled him into evil, poor lad!  And, whether or not, it would ill
become me to cast up to him his past ill-deeds to-day."

"And all the folk were so glad to see him!" said Archie when he came
home.  Hugh was lingering outside, speaking to a friend who had walked
with them over the hills, and Archie spoke fast and earnestly to have
all told before he came in.  "And they all minded on you, aunt, and said
how thankful you would be, and how the Lord was good to you in your old
age.  And James Muir said he hoped he was never to go away again; and
Allan Grant said that English Smith was to give up Glen Elder, and why
should it not go back into the old hands again?  They all said he would
surely stay in the countryside now."

"And what said my son to that?" asked Mrs Blair tremulously.  She had
not ventured to ask him herself yet.

"Oh, he said little.  I think it was because his heart was so full.
And, Lily, he put five golden sovereigns into the poor's box!  Steenie
Muir told me that he saw his grandfather count it, and he heard him say
that now surely the Lord was to bring back the good days to Glen Elder;
and he thanked God for your sake, aunt.  And, Lily, who kens but you may
be `the wee white Lily of Glen Elder' again?"

"A `wee white Lily,' indeed," said her aunt fondly and gravely; but
Lilias laughed, first at the thought of the golden sovereigns and
Nancy's "nine-and-twenty more," destined still to be hidden away in the
china teapot, and then a little at being called the "Lily of Glen
Elder."

"It's like a story in a book, aunt.  It would be too much happiness to
have the old days come back again--the happy days at Glen Elder;" and
then her ready tears flowed at the thought that followed--

"They can never--never quite come back again."



CHAPTER NINE.

LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.

"Bonny Glen Elder!" repeated Archie to himself many times, as, holding
his cousin's hand, he walked over the fair sloping fields and through
the sunny gardens.  His cousin repeated it, too, sometimes aloud,
sometimes sighing the words in regretful silence, remembering all that
had come and gone since the happy days when he, a "guileless laddie,"
had called the place his home.

The farm had been rented by the Elder family for three generations.
Archie's father had never held it.  It had been in the hands of Hugh's
father during his short lifetime; but Archie's father and grandfather
had been born there, and his great-grandfather had spent the greater
part of his life on the place; and it quite suited Archie's ideas of the
fitness of things that it should again be held by his cousin, who,
though he did not bear the name, was yet of the blood of these men,
whose memory was still honoured in the countryside.  It suited Hugh's
ideas, too, but with one difference.  He knew two or three things that
Archie did not know.  He had not come back a very rich man, according to
his ideas of riches, though he knew the people about him might call him
rich.  He had come home with no plan of remaining, for he was a young
man still, and looked upon the greater part of his life's work as before
him.  And through the talk he was keeping up with Archie as they went
on, there was running all the time the question, "Should the rest of his
work be done in India or in Glen Elder?"  It was not an easy question to
answer.  He felt, with great unhappiness, that, whatever the answer
might be, it must give his mother pain.

One thing he had determined upon.  His mother was to be again the
mistress of Glen Elder.  This might be brought to pass in one of two
ways.  He could lease the farm, as his forefathers had done, and be a
farmer, as they had been, living a far easier life than they had lived,
however, because of the means he had acquired during the last ten years.
Or, he could purchase Glen Elder, and invest the rest of his fortune
for the benefit of his mother and his little cousins, and then go back
to his business in India again.  He thought his mother would like the
first plan best; but it did not seem the best to him.

He was afraid of himself.  He had never, in his youth, liked a quiet,
rural life, and his manner of life for the past ten years had not been
such as to prepare him to like it better.  He feared that he could never
settle down contented and useful in such a life; and he knew that an
unwilling sacrifice would never make his mother happy.  And, yet, would
it be right to leave her, feeble and aged as she was?  Of course his
going away would be different now.  He would leave her in comfortable
circumstances, with no doubt about his fate, no fears as to his
well-doing, to harass her.  But even in such a case it would not be
right to go away without her full and free consent.

It spoiled the pleasure of his walk--that and some other thoughts he
had; and he sighed as he sat down to rest on a bank where he had often
rested when a child.

"I can fancy us all living very happily here, if some things were
different," he said at last.

"What things, Cousin Hugh?" asked Archie, in some surprise.

Hugh laughed.

"I ought to have said, `if I were different myself,' I suppose."

"But you _are_ different," said Archie.

"Yes," said his cousin gravely, after a moment's hesitation; "but oh,
lad, I have many sad things to mind, and sinful things, too.  All these
years cannot be blotted out nor forgotten."

"But they are past, Cousin Hugh, and forgiven, and in one sense blotted
out.  There is nothing of them left that need hinder you from being
happy here again."

"Ah, well, that may be.  God is good.  But I was thinking of something
else when I spoke first.  I was thinking that I am not a farmer."

"But you can learn to be one.  It's easy enough."

"I am afraid I should not find it easy.  I am afraid I should not do
justice to the place.  It spoils one for a quiet life, to be knocked
about in the world as I have been.  And I know I could never make my
mother happy if I were discontented myself; at least, if she knew of my
discontent."

"She would be sure to see it.  You couldn't hide it from her, if
discontent was in your heart.  My aunt doesn't say much, but she sees
clearly.  But why should you not be happy here?  I can't understand it."

"No; I trust you may never be able to understand it.  Archie, lad, it is
one of the penalties of an evil life that it changes the nature, so that
the love of pure and simple pleasures, which it drives away, has but a
small chance of coming back again, even when the life is amended.  It is
a sad experience."

"But an evil life, Cousin Hugh!  You should not say that," said Archie
sorrowfully.

"Well, what would you have?  A life of disobedience to one's mother, ten
years of forgetfulness--no, not forgetfulness, but neglect of her.
Surely that cannot be called other than an evil life.  And it bears its
fruit."

There was a long pause; and then Archie said:

"Cousin Hugh, I'll tell you what I would do.  I would speak to my aunt
about it.  If it is true that you could never settle down contented
here, she will be sure to see that it is best for you to go, and she
will say so.  I once heard James Muir say that he knew no woman who
surpassed my aunt in sense and judgment.  She will be sure to see what
is right, and tell you what to do."

Pleasure and pain oddly mingled in the feelings with which Hugh listened
to his cousin's grave commendation of his mother's sense and judgment;
but he felt that there was nothing better to be done than to tell her
all that was in his heart, and he lost no time in doing so, and Archie's
words were made good.  She saw the situation at a glance, and told him
"what to do."  Much as she would have liked to have her son near her,
she knew that he was too old to acquire new tastes, and too young to be
content with a life of comparative inactivity.  She told him so,
heartily and cheerfully, not marring the effect of her words by any
murmurs or repinings of her own.  She only once said:

"If you could but have stayed in Scotland, Hugh, lad; for your mother is
growing old."

"Who knows but it may be so arranged?" said Hugh thoughtfully.  "There
is a branch of our house in L--.  It might be managed.  But, whether or
not, I have a year, perhaps two, before me yet."

But it came to pass, all the same, that before the month of May was out
they were all settled at Glen Elder.  Though "that weary spendthrift,"
Maxwell of Pentlands, as Mrs Stirling called him, could not break the
entail on the estate of Pentlands, as for the sake of his many debts and
his sinful pleasures he madly tried to do, he could dispose of the
outlying farm of Glen Elder; and Hugh Blair became the purchaser of the
farm and of a broad adjoining field, called the Nether Park.  So he
owned the land that his fathers had only leased; or, rather, his mother
owned it, for it was purchased in her name, and was hers to have and to
hold, or to dispose of as she pleased.  His mother's comfort, Hugh said,
and the welfare of his young cousins, must not be left to the risks and
chances of business.  They must be put beyond dependence on his
uncertain life or possible failure, or he could not be quite at rest
with regard to them when he should be far away.

Glen Elder had not suffered in the hands of English Smith.  As a
faithful servant of the owner, he had held it on favourable terms, and
had hoped to hold it long.  So he had done well by the land, as all the
neighbours declared; though at first they had watched his new-fangled
plans with jealous eyes.  It was "in good heart" when it changed hands,
and was looking its very best on the bright May day when they went home
to it.  It was a happy day to them all, though it was a sad one, too,
for Hugh and his mother.  But the sadness passed away in the cheerful
bustle of welcome from old friends; and it was not long before they
settled down into a quiet and pleasant routine.

The coming home, and the new life opening before her, seemed for a long
time strange and unreal to Lilias.  She used to wake in the morning with
the burden of her cottage-cares upon her, till the sight of her pleasant
room, and the sunshine coming in through the clustering roses, chased
her anxious thoughts away.  The sense of repose that gradually grew upon
her in her new home was very grateful to her; but she did not enter
eagerly into the new interests and pleasures, as her brother did.
Indeed, she could do very little but be still and enjoy the rest and
quiet; for, when all necessity for exertion was over, that came upon her
which must have come soon at any rate: her strength quite gave way, and,
for some time, anxiety on her account sobered the growing happiness of
the rest.

Even her aunt did not realise till then how much beyond her strength had
been the child's exertions during the winter and spring.  Not that she
would acknowledge herself to be ill.  She was only tired, and would be
herself again in a little while.  But months passed before that time
came.  For many a day she lay on the sofa in the long, low parlour of
Glen Elder, only wishing to be left in peace, smiling now and then into
the anxious faces of her aunt and Archie, saying "it was so nice to be
quiet and to have nothing to do."

But this passed away.  In a little while she was beguiled into the sunny
garden, and before the harvest-holidays set Archie at liberty she was
quite ready and able for a renewal of their rambles among the hills
again.

As for Mrs Blair, the return of her son, and the coming home to Glen
Elder, did not quite renew her youth; but when the burden that had bowed
her down for so many years was taken away, the change in her was
pleasant to see.  For a long time she rejoiced with trembling over her
returned wanderer; but as day after day passed, each leaving her more
assured that it was not her wayward lad that had returned to her, but a
true penitent and firm believer in Jesus, a deeper peace settled down
upon her long-tried spirit, and "I waited patiently for the Lord; and He
inclined unto me, and heard my cry.  He hath set my feet upon a rock,
and established my goings.  And He hath put a new song in my mouth,"
became a part of her daily thanksgiving.

As for him, if it had been the one desire of his life to atone for the
sorrow he had caused her in his youth, he could not have done otherwise
than he did.  He made her comfort his first care.  Her slightest
intimation was law to him.  Silently and unobtrusively, but constantly,
did he manifest a grave and respectful tenderness towards her, till she,
as well as others, could not but wonder, remembering the lad who would
let nothing come between him and the gratification of his own foolish
desires.

"You dinna mind your cousin Hugh, Lilias, my dear?" said Mrs Stirling
to her one day.  "I mind him well--the awfulest laddie for liking his
own way that ever was heard tell of!  You see, being the only one left
to her, his mother thought of him first always, till he could hardly do
otherwise than think first of himself; and a sore heart he gave her many
a time.  There's a wonderful difference now.  It must just be that,"
added she, meditatively.  "`A new heart will I give you, and a right
spirit will I put within you.'  Lilias, my dear, he's a changed man."

A bright colour flashed into Lilias's face, and tears started in her
eyes.

"I am sure of it!  We may be poor and sick and sorrowful again, but the
worst of my aunt's troubles can never come back to her more."

He was very kind to his young cousins, partly because he wished to repay
the love and devotion which had brightened so many of his mother's dark
days, but chiefly because he soon loved them dearly for their own sakes.
Lilias he always treated with a respect and deference which, but for
the gentle dignity with which his kindness was received by her, might
have seemed a little out of place offered to one still such a child.

With Archie he was different.  The gravity and reserve which seemed to
have become habitual to Hugh Blair in his intercourse with others never
showed itself to him.  The frank, open nature of the lad seemed to act
as a charm upon him.  The perfect simplicity of his character, the
earnestness with which he strove first of all to do right, filled his
cousin with wonder, and oftentimes awoke within him bitter regret at the
remembrance of what his own youth had been; and a living lesson did the
unconscious lad become to him many a time.

No one rejoiced more heartily than did Mrs Stirling at the coming home
of Hugh Blair and the consequent change of circumstances to his mother
and his little cousins; but her joy was expressed in her own fashion.
One might have supposed that, in her opinion, some great calamity had
befallen them, so dismal were her prophecies concerning them.

"It's true you have borne adversity well, and that is in a measure a
preparation for the well-bearing of prosperity.  But there's no telling.
The heart is deceitful, and it is no easy to carry a full cup.  You'll
need grace, Lilias, my dear.  And you'll doubtless get it if you seek it
in a right spirit."  But, judging from Mrs Stirling's melancholy tones
and shakings of the head, it was plain to see that she expected there
would be failure somewhere.

With keen eyes she watched for some symptoms of the spoiling process in
Lilias, and was slow to believe that she was not going to be
disappointed in her, as she had been in so many others.  But time went
on, and Lilias passed unscathed through what, in Nancy's estimation, was
the severest of all ordeals.  She was sent to a school "to learn
accomplishments," and came home again, after two years, "not a bit set
up."  So Mrs Stirling came to feel at last that she might have faith in
the stability of her young favourite.

"She's just the very same Lilias Elder that used to teach the bairns and
go wandering over the hills with her brother; only she's blither and
bonnier.  She's Miss Elder of the Glen now, as I heard young Mr Graham
calling her to his friend; but she's no' to call changed for all that."

And Mrs Stirling was right.  Lilias was not changed.  Prosperity did no
unkind office for her.  Those happy days developed in her no germ of
selfishness.  Still her first thought was for others, the first desire
of her heart still was to know what was right, and to obtain grace and
strength to do it.  In some respects she might be changed, but in this
she was the very same.

She grew taller and wore a brighter bloom on her cheeks, and she
gradually outgrew the look that was older than her years; but she never
lost the gentle gravity that had made her seem so different from the
other children in the eyes of those who knew her in her time of many
cares.

Nancy had not the same confidence in Archie.  Not that she could find
much fault with him; but he had never been so great a favourite with her
as his sister, and his boyish indifference to her praise or blame did
not, in her opinion, accord with the possession of much sense or
discretion.

"And, Miss Lilias, my dear, it's no' good for a laddie like him to be
made so much of," said she.  "The most of the lads that I have seen put
first and cared for most have, in one way or another, turned out a
disappointment.  Either they turned wilful, and went their own way to no
good; or they turned soft, and were a vexation.  And it would be a
grievous thing indeed if the staff on which you lean should be made a
rod to correct you, my dear."

But Lilias feared no disappointment in her brother.

"`The law of the Lord is in his heart, none of his steps shall slide,'"
she answered softly to Mrs Stirling; and even she confessed that surely
he needed no other safeguard.

A great deal might be told of the happy days that followed at Glen
Elder.  Hugh Blair never went back to India again.  He married--much to
his mother's joy--one whom he had loved, and who had loved him, in the
old time, before evil counsels had beguiled him from his duty and driven
him from his home,--one who had never forgotten him during all those
sorrowful days of waiting.  Their home was at a distance; but they were
often at Glen Elder, and Mrs Blair's declining days were overshadowed
by no doubt as to the well-doing or the well-being of her son.

Archie went first to the high school, and then to college.  The master
was loth to part from his favourite pupil; but David Graham was going.
It would be well, the master said, for Davie to get through the first
year of the temptations while his brother John was there "to keep an eye
on him;" and Davie's best friends and warmest admirers could not but
agree, and, though not even the doubting Nancy was afraid for Archie as
his master was afraid for his more thoughtless friend, it was yet
thought best that the friends should go together.  Archie had some
troubles in his school and college life, as who has not? but he had many
pleasures.  He gained honour to himself as a scholar, and, what was
better, he was ever known as one who feared God and who sought before
all things His honour.

Lilias passed her school-days with her friend Anne Graham, in the house
of the kind Dr Gordon.  It need not be said that they were happy, and
that they greatly improved under the gentle and judicious guidance of
Mrs Gordon, and that Lilias learnt to love her dearly.

And when their school-days were over, there followed a useful and happy
life at home.  The girls kept up their old friendship begun that day in
the kirk-yard, with fewer ups and downs than generally characterise the
friendships of girls of their age.  Another than Lilias might have
fancied Anne's tone to be a little peremptory sometimes; but, if Miss
Graham thought herself wiser than her friend in some things, she as
fully believed in her friend's superior goodness; and not one of all the
little flock that Lilias used to rule and teach in the cottage by the
common, long ago, deferred more to her than, in her heart, did Anne.

So a constant and pleasant intercourse was kept up between them, and
Lilias was as much at home in the manse as in the Glen.  They still
pursued what Davie derisively called "their studies."  That is, they
read history and other books together, some of them grave and useful
books, and some of them not quite so useful, but nice books for all
that.  Lilias delighted in poetry, and in the limited number of works of
imagination permitted within the precincts of the manse.  Anne liked
them too; but, believing it to be a weakness, she said less about her
enjoyment of them.  Indeed, it was her wont to check the raptures of
Lilias and her little sister Jessie over some of their favourites, and
to rebuke the murmurs of the latter over books that were "good, but not
bonny."

They had other pleasures, too--gardening, and rambles among the hills,
and cottage-visiting.  But the chief business and pleasure of Lilias was
in caring for the comfort of her aunt, and in the guiding of the
household affairs at Glen Elder.  Matters within and without were so
arranged that, while she might always be busy, she was never burdened
with care; and so the quiet days passed on, each bringing such sweet
content as does not often fall to the lot of any household for a long
time together.

But, though Lilias took pleasure in her friends and her home, her books
and her household occupations, her best and highest happiness did not
rest on these.  Afterwards, when changes came, bringing anxious nights
and sorrowful days, when the shadow of death hung over the household,
and the untoward events of life seemed to threaten separation from
friends who were none the less dear because no tie of blood united them,
the foundation of her peace was unshaken.  "For they that trust in the
Lord shall be as Mount Zion, that cannot be removed."

Here for the present our story must close.

They went home to Glen Elder in May.  Three years passed, and May came
again, and Glen Elder and Kirklands, and all the hills and dales
between, were looking their loveliest in their changing robes of brown
and purple and green.  The air was sweet with the scent of
hawthorn-blossoms, and vocal with the song of birds and the hum of bees.
There was not a fleck of cloud on all the sky, nor of mist on all the
hills.  The day was perfect, warm, bright, and still; such a day as does
not come many times in all the Scottish year.

Nancy Stirling stood at her cottage-door, looking out over the green
slope, and the burn running full to the fields beyond, and the faraway
hills; and, as she looked, she sighed, and quite forgot the water-bucket
in her hand, and that she was on her way to the burn for water to make
her afternoon cup of tea.  We speak of spring as a joyful season; we
say, "the glad spring," and "the merry, merry May;" and it is a glad
season to the birds and the bees, the lambs and the little children, and
to grown people, too, who have nothing very sad to remember.  But the
coming back of so many fair things as the spring brings reminds many a
one of fair things which can never come again; and hearts more contented
than Mrs Stirling's was, sometimes sigh in the light of such a day.

"It's a bonny day," said she to herself, "a seasonable day for the
country; and we should be thankful."  But she sighed again as she said
it; and, for no reason that she could give, her thoughts wandered away
to a row of graves in the kirk-yard, and farther away still, to a home
and a time in which she saw herself a little child, so blithe, so full
of happy life, that, as it all came back, she could not but wonder how
she ever should have changed to the troubled, dissatisfied woman that
she knew herself to be.

"Oh, well!  It couldna but be so, in a world like this.  Such changes ay
have been, and ay must be," said she, trying to comfort herself with the
"old philosophy."  But she did not quite succeed.  For the passing years
had changed her, and it came into her mind, as it had often come of
late, that she might perhaps have made a better use of all that life had
brought her.  But it was not a pleasant thought to pursue; and she gave
a little start of relief and pleasure as she caught sight of two figures
coming slowly up the brae.

"It's Lilias Elder and Archie.  She'll have nothing left to wish for now
that she has him home again.  Eh! but she's a bonnie lassie, and a good!
And Archie, too, is a well-grown lad, and not so set up as he might be,
considering."

It was Lilias and her brother.  Archie was at home, after his first
session at the college; and Nancy was right; Lilias had little left to
wish for.

"Well, bairns," she said, after the first greetings were over, "will you
come in, or will you sit down here at the door?  It's such a bonny day.
So you're home again, Archie, lad, and glad to be, I hope?"

"Very glad," said Archie.  "I never was so glad before."

"You said that last time," said Lilias, laughing.

"Well, maybe I did.  But it's true all the same.  I'm more glad every
time."

"And you didna come home before it was time," said Nancy.  "You're
thinner and paler than your aunt likes to see you, I'm thinking."

"I'm perfectly well, I assure you," said Archie.

"He will have a rest and the fresh country air again," said Lilias.  "He
has been very close at his books."

"Well, it may be that," said Mrs Stirling.  "And so you're glad to be
home again?  You havena been letting that daft laddie, Davie Graham,
lead you into any mischief that you would be afraid to tell your sister
about, I hope?"

Archie laughed, and shook his head.  Lilias laughed a little, too, as
she said--

"Oh no, indeed.  Even John says they have done wonderfully well: and
after that you need have no fear."

"It's not unlikely that two or three things might happen in such a
place, and John Graham be none the wiser.  And it's not likely that
he'll say any ill of your brother in your hearing," said Nancy drily.
"Not that I'm misdoubting you, Archie, man; and may you be kept safe,
for your sister's sake!"

"For a better reason than that, I hope, Mrs Stirling," said Lilias
gravely.

"Well, so be it; though his sister is a good enough reason for him, I
hope.  But where have you been?  To see Bell Ray?  How is she to-day,
poor body?"

"We have not been there," said Lilias.  "We meant to go when we came
from home; but we stayed so long down yonder that we had no time.  I am
going some day soon."

"And where's `down yonder,' if I may ask?" demanded Mrs Stirling.

"At the moor cottage," said Lilias.  "We came over the hills to see it
again, just to mind us of old times."

"And we stayed so long, speaking about these old times, that we are
likely to be late home," said Archie; "and they are all coming up from
the manse, to have tea in the Glen.  We must make haste home, Lily."

"Yes; and we stayed a while at the old seat under the rowan-tree.  We
could only just reach it, the burn is so full.  And look at all the
flowers I found in the cottage-garden--heart's-ease, and daisies, and
sweet-brier, and thyme.  It seemed a pity to leave them, with nobody to
see them.  Give me something to put them in, Mrs Stirling, and I'll
leave some of them for you.  We will have time enough for that, Archie,
never fear."

She sat down on the door-step, and laid the flowers on her lap.

"And wherefore should you be caring to mind yourselves of the old times,
I wonder?" said Nancy, as she sat down beside her, holding the jug for
the flowers in her hand.  "Some of those days were sad enough, I'm sure.
Maybe it's to make you humble?"

"Yes, and thankful," said Lilias softly.

"And those days were very pleasant, too, in one way," said Archie.

"Ay, to you, lad.  But some of them brought small pleasure to your
sister, I'm thinking," said Nancy sharply.  "You're a wise lad, but you
dinna ken everything that came in those old times, as you call them."

"But some of the things that I like best to remember happened on some of
the very worst of those days," said Lilias.  "I should never have known
half your goodness, for one thing.  Do you mind that last day that I
came to you?  Oh, how weary I was that day!"

"And much good I did you," said Nancy.

"Indeed you did, more than I could tell you then, more than I can tell
you now," said Lilias, giving the last touch to the flowers as she rose.
"I like to think of those days.  We are all the happier now for the
troubles of the old times."

"And truly I think you'll ay be but the happier for whatever time may
bring you," said Nancy musingly, as she watched them hastening over the
hill together.  "`To mind us of the old times,'" quoth she.  "There are
few folk but would be glad to forget, and to make others forget, `the
hole of the pit.'  And look at these flowers, now!  Who but Lilias Elder
would think of a poor body like me caring for what is good neither to
eat nor to drink?  She's like no one else.  And as for her brother, he's
not so set up as folk might expect.  May they be kept safe from the
world's taint and stain!  I suppose the Lord can do it.  I'm sure He
can.  `The law of the Lord is in his heart, none of his steps shall
slide.'  She said it of her brother once; and if it is true of him it's
true of her.  It is that that makes the difference.  They have no cause
to be afraid, even though `the earth be removed.'  Eh! but it is a grand
thing to have the Lord on our side!  Nothing can go far wrong with us
then."





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Orphans of Glen Elder" ***

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