WHO WAS LOST AND IS FOUND

A NOVEL

BY

MRS OLIPHANT

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCIV

All Rights reserved

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ‘BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE’

WHO WAS LOST AND IS FOUND.

CHAPTER I.

One of the most respected inhabitants of the village, rather of the parish, of Eskholm in Mid-Lothian was Mrs Ogilvy, still often called Mrs James by the elder people who had known her predecessors, who had seen her married, and knew everything about her, her antecedents and belongings. This is a thing very satisfactory in one way, as giving you an assurance that nothing can be suddenly found out about you, no disreputable new member or incident foisted into your family life; while, on the other hand, it has its inconveniences, since it becomes more or less the right of your neighbours to have every new domestic occurrence explained to them in all its bearings. Great peace, however, had for a long time fallen over the house in which Mrs James Ogilvy was spending the end of her quiet days: no new incident had occurred there for years: its daily routine to all appearance went on as cheerfully as could be desired. It was one of the prettiest houses of the neighbourhood. Built on the side of a little hill, as so many houses are in Scotland, it was a tallish two-storeyed house behind, plunging its foundations deep in the soil, with an ample garden lying east and south, full of all the old-fashioned vegetables and most of the old-fashioned flowers of its period. But in front it was the trimmest cottage, low but broad, opening upon a little round platform encircled by a drive, and that, in its turn, by closely clipped holly-hedges, as thick as a wall and as smooth. Andrew, the gardener, thought it more genteel to fill the little flower-border in front with bedding-out plants in the summer,—red geraniums, blue lobelias, and so forth—never the pansies and gillyflowers his mistress loved,—and it was only with great difficulty that he had been prevented from shutting out the view by a clump of rhododendrons in the middle of the grass plot. “The view!” Andrew said in high contempt: but this time his mistress had her way. The view, perhaps, was nothing very wonderful to eyes accustomed to fine scenery. A bit of the road that led to Edinburgh and the world was visible among the trees at the foot of the brae, where the private path of the Hewan between its close holly-hedges sloped upward to the house: and behind stretched the full expanse of country,—the towers of the castle making a break among the clouds of trees on one hand, and some of the roofs of the village and the little stumpy church-steeple showing on the other side. Between these two points, and far on either side, the Esk somehow threaded his way, running by village and castle impartially, but indeed exerting himself very much for the Hewan, forming little cascades and bits of broken water at the foot of the steep brae, throwing up glints of sunshine as it were from the depths, and filling the air always with a murmur of friendly companionship of which the inhabitants were unconscious, but of which had it stopped they would have instantly become aware and felt that all the world had gone wrong.

There was a garden-chair placed out here under the window of the drawing-room, where Mrs Ogilvy used to sit during a great part of the summer evenings—those long summer evenings of Scotland, which are so lingering and so sweet. To sit “at the doors” is so natural a thing for the women. They do it everywhere, in all climates and regions. Ladies who were critical said that this was a bad habit, and that there was nothing so becoming for a woman as to sit in her own drawing-room, in her own chair, where she could always be found when she was wanted. But a seat that was just under the drawing-room window, was not that as little different from being inside as could be? I agree, however, with the critics that the sentiment was quite different, and that to go indoors at the right time and have your lamp lighted, and sit down in your comfortable chair, denotes, perhaps, a more contented mind and a spirit reconciled to fate.

It would have been hard, however, to have looked upon the face of Mrs James Ogilvy as she went about her little household duties in the morning, or took her walks about the garden, or knitted her stocking in the placid afternoon, and to have thought of her as discontented or struggling with fate. She was about sixty, a little woman but trim in figure, with a pleasant colour, and eyes still bright with animation and interest. Perhaps you will think it ridiculous to be asked to interest yourself in the character and proceedings of an old woman of sixty when there are so many younger and prettier things in the world: which I allow is quite true in the general: yet there may be advantages in it, once in a way. She wore much the same dress all the year through, which was a black silk gown of varying degrees of richness (her best could “stand alone,” it was so good), or rather of newness—for the best gown of one year was the everyday dress of another, not so fresh perhaps, but wearing to the last thread, and always looking good to the last, as a good black silk ought to do. Over this she wore a white shawl, which on superior occasions was of China crape beautifully embroidered, a thing to be remembered—but often of humbler material. I recollect one of fine wool with a coloured border printed in what was called an Indian pine pattern in those days. But whatever the kind was, she always wore a white shawl. Her cap was also all white, lace for best, but net for everydays, trimmed with white ribbons, and tied under the chin with the same. This dress had been old-fashioned when she assumed it, and was more than old-fashioned now; but it suited her very well, as unusual dresses, it may be remarked, usually do.

And she was kind as kind could be. She could not refuse either beggar or borrower, unless the one was a sturdy beggar presuming on the supposed loneliness of the house and unaware of Andrew in the background, upon whom she would flash forth indignant, sending him off “with a flee in his lug,” as Janet said: or the other a professional spendthrift of other people’s money. Short of these two classes—and even to them her heart had moments of melting—she refused nobody within her humble means. But I will not deceive you by pretending that she was a woman who went a great deal among the poor. That fashion of charity had not come into use in her days. The Scotch poor are farouche, they are arrogant, and stand tremendously on their dignity—which is thought by many people a fine thing, though, I confess, I don’t think it so; but it was no doubt cultivated more or less by good people like Mrs Ogilvy, who never visited among them, yet was ready to give with a liberality which was more like that of a Roman Catholic lady “making her soul” by such means, than a Scotch Puritan looking upon all she herself said or did as unworthy of regard. They came to her when they were in want; they came for food, for clothes, for coals; for money to pay an urgent debt; for all things that could affect family peace. And they very seldom were sent empty away. It was for this, perhaps, that the other ladies thought a woman should be found in her own chair in a corner of her own drawing-room. But if so, it certainly did not matter much, for Mrs Ogilvy’s seat outside answered quite as well.

There was a dining-room and a drawing-room inside, one on each side of the door. The latter was usually called the parlour. It was full of curious things, not exactly of the kind that are considered curious now,—Mrs Ogilvy was not acquainted with bric-à-brac,—but there had been two or three sailors in the family, and they had brought unsophisticated wonders, shells, pieces of coral, bowls, sometimes china and precious, sometimes wood and of no value at all: but all esteemed pretty much alike, and given an equal place among the treasures of the house. There was some good china besides of her own, one good portrait, vaguely believed or hoped by the minister and some other connoisseurs of the village to be a Rubens (which meant, I suppose, even in their sanguine imaginations, a copy); and a row of black silhouettes, representing various members of the family, over the mantelpiece. Therefore it will be seen there was great impartiality in respect to artistic value. The carpet was partially covered with a grey linen cloth to preserve it, which gave the room a somewhat chilly look. It was in the dining-room that Mrs Ogilvy chiefly sat. She would have found it a great trouble to change from one to another at every meal. The large dining-table had been placed against the wall, which was a concession to comfort for which many friends blamed her during these years when Mrs Ogilvy had been alone. A smaller round table stood near the fire, her chair, her little old-fashioned stand for book and her work and her occasional newspaper, in the corner. It was all very comfortable, especially on the wintry evenings when the fire sparkled and the lamp burned softly, and everything felt warm and looked bright—as bright as Mrs Ogilvy’s face with her white hair under her white cap, and her white shawl upon her shoulders. It might have been a symphony in white, had anybody heard of anything so grand and superior in these days.

It seldom happened, however, that one of the long evenings passed without the entrance of Janet, who at a certain hour in the placid night began always to wonder audibly what the mistress was doing, and to divine that she would be the better of a word with somebody, “if it was only you or me.” Perhaps this meant that Janet herself by that time had become bored by the society of Andrew, her husband and constant companion, who was a taciturn person, and who, even if he could have been persuaded to utter more than one word in half an hour, had no new subject upon which he could discourse, but only themes which Janet knew by heart. They were a most peaceable couple, never quarrelling, working into each other’s hands as the neighbours said, keeping the Hewan outside and inside as bright as a new pin; and I have no doubt that the sincerest affection, as well as every tie of habit and long companionship, bound them together: but still there were moments very probably when Janet, without using the word or probably understanding it, was bored. The “fore-night” was long, and the ticking of the clock, so offensively distinct when nothing is being said, got on Janet’s nerves; and then she bethought herself of the mistress sitting all alone in the silence. “I’ll just go ben and see if she wants onything,” she said. “Aweel: I’ll take a look at Sandy and see if he’s comfortable,” replied Andrew. Sandy was a sleek old pony with which Mrs Ogilvy drove in to Eskholm when she had occasion, and sometimes even to Edinburgh, and he held a high place in Andrew’s affections. The one visit was as invariable as the other; and Sandy, to whom perhaps also the fore-night was long, probably expected it too.

“Well, Janet,” Mrs Ogilvy would say, putting aside the newspaper. She did not put aside her stocking, which went on by itself mechanically, but she turned her countenance towards her old servant always with the shining on it of a friendly smile.

“Well, mem—I just came in to see if ye maybe were wanting onything. Andrew he’s away taking a look at Sandy. You would think he is a Christian to see the troke there is between that beast and my man.”

“Andrew’s a good creature, mindful of everybody’s comfort,” said Mrs Ogilvy.

“I’m saying nothing against that; but it micht be more cheery for me if he were a wee less preceese about what he hears and sees. A man is mair about, he canna miss what might be ca’ed the events of the day. But you and me, mem, we miss them a’ up here.”

“That’s true, Janet; a man that brings in the news is more entertainment in a house than the newspaper itself.”

“Whiles,” said Janet, moderating the expression. “It’s no the clashes and clavers of the toun that I’m wanting, but when onything important is stirring—there’s another muckle paper-mill to be set up on our water. It brings wark for the lads—and the lasses too—and ye daurna say, just for the sake of Esk, that is no living thing——”

“I have more courage than you, Janet, for I daur to say it. What! my bonnie Esk no a living thing! What was ever more living than the bonnie running water? Eh, woman, running water is not like anything else in the world! It’s just life itself! It sees everything happen and flows on—no stopping for the like of us creatures of a day. It heartens me to think that there’s aye some bairns sitting playing by it, or some young thing dreaming her dream, or some woman with her little weans—not you and me, for our time is past, but just other folk.”

“I’m no like you, mem. I get little comfort out of that. It’s a bonnie stream, and I like the sough of it coming up through the trees; but none of the paper-mills would stop that. And when you think that it will bring siller into the place and wark, and more comfort for the poor folk——”

“Will it do that? God forbid that I should go against what brings work and comfort. It will bring new families, Janet, and strange men to sit and drink, and roar their dreadful songs at the public-house door; and more publics, and more dirty wives and miserable weans. I’m just for doing the best we can with what we have,—and that is not an easy thing.”

“And I’m for ganging forward,” cried Janet. “The more ye produce the better off ye are—that’s what the books ca’ an axiom. I carena for the new folk; but it is a grand thing to be making something, and putting work into men’s hands to do. Thae poor Millers themselves get but little out of it. They say there’s another of them, the little one with the curly head, that is just going like the rest.”

“Oh, Janet, the Lord forbid! the little blue-eyed one, that was just the comfort of the house?”

“That’s what folk say. I’m no answering for it. In an unfortunate family like that, ye canna have a sair finger but they’ll say it’s the auld trouble breaking out.”

“Poor man, poor man!” cried Mrs Ogilvy. “My heart is wae for him, Janet. He is like the man in the Bible that built Jericho. He has laid his foundations in his first-born, and established his gates on his youngest son. You must tell Andrew that I will want him and Sandy to-morrow to go and inquire. No the bonnie little one that was his comfort!—oh, not her, not her, Janet!”

“Mem, it is aye the Lord that kens best.”

“I am not misdoubting that; but I’ve had many a thought—I would not aye be blaming the Lord. When the seed is put into the ground, we should be prepared for what it will bring forth, and no look for leaves of silver and apples of gold; but why should I speak? for there is little meaning in words, and we are a strange race—oh, just a strange race—following our wild ways.”

Mrs Ogilvy had dropped her stocking by this time into her lap, and she wrung her slender hands as she spoke, with a look that was not like the calm of the place. Whether Janet noted this or merely followed the instinct of her wandering record of events, it was impossible to tell from her steady countenance, which did not change.

“And there’s to be a wedding up the water at Greenha’. You will mind, mem, Thomoseen, that was once in our ain house here as the girrl, and an awfu’ time I had with her, for she would learn nothing. She’s grown the biggest woman on a’ Eskside, and they call her Muckle Tammy, and mony an adventure she’s had since she left my kitchen—having broken, ye will maybe mind, mem, every dish we had. And for her ain sake, thinking it would maybe be a lesson to her, I wanted you to take it off her wages——”

“Yes, yes, I mind. The things would not stay in her hands; they were too big. We have had our experiences with our girrls, Janet,” Mrs Ogilvy said, with a smile. She had taken up her knitting again, and recovered her tranquil looks.

“That we have, mem! if I was to make out a chronicle—but some of them have turned out no so ill after a’. Weel, Muckle Tammy, she has gotten a man.”

“He will likely be some small bit creature,” the mistress said.

“They say no—a clever chield, and grand wi’ a garden, and meaning to grow vegetables for the market at Edinburgh; for she is a lass with a tocher, her mother’s kailyard and her bit cottage, and nothing for him to do but draw in a chair and sit down.”

“I doubt there’ll be but little comfort inside,” said Mrs Ogilvy. “If it had been her to look after the kail and the cabbages, and him to keep everything clean and trig; but there’s no telling. A change like that works many ferlies. You must just see, Janet, if there is anything she is wanting for her plenishing—some linen, or a few silver teaspoons, or a set of china, or a new gown.”

“They a’ ken there will be something for them in the coffers at the Hewan,” said Janet; “but, mem, if ye will be guided by me, you will let it be no too much. If only one of these dishes had been stoppit off her wages it would have been a grand lesson: but ye will never hear a word! A set of chiney! they would a’ be broken afore ever she got them hame.”

“Let it be the silver spoons then, Janet; they are the things that last the best. And now, if you were to cry in Andrew, we might read our chapter, and get ready for our beds.”

This was the invariable conclusion of these evening colloquies. And Janet went “ben” to her kitchen and then to the garden door, and “cried upon” Andrew, still conversing with the pony in the stable. And then there was a great turning of keys and drawing of bolts, and the house was closed up for the night. And finally the pair went into the parlour, where Mrs Ogilvy, with her clear little educated voice read “the chapter,” usually from one of the Gospels, and read in sequence night by night. Janet was of opinion that she never understood so well as when her mistress read, and indeed Mrs Ogilvy had a little pride in her reading, which was very clear and distinct with its broad vowels. The little prayer which was read out of a book did not please Andrew so much, who was of opinion that prayers ought never to be previously invented and written, but come, as he said, “straught from the hairt.” He had himself indeed thought on occasion that he could have poured forth the sentiments that moved the family with more unction and expression than was in the sometimes faltering voice and pause for breath which affected his mistress when she read these “cauld words out of a book”; but Andrew knew his own place: or if he did not know, Janet did.

What was there to catch the breath, and make the voice falter, in the printed words and amid all that deep calm of waning life? It was at the prayer for the absent that Mrs Ogilvy for fifteen years past had always broken down. Nay, not broken down: she was too deeply sensible that to make an exhibition of private feeling while leading the family devotions would have been irreverent and unseemly, but she was not capable of going on quite smoothly without a pause over that petition, “Those who are absent of this family, be Thou with them to bless them, and bring them home in Thy good time if it be Thy blessed will.” Every night there came to Janet’s eyes as she knelt a secret tear; and every night it seemed to Andrew that if he might speak “straught from the hairt” instead of that cauld prayer that was printed, the Lord would hear. I need not say that even in a Scotch book of domestic worship the words were varied from day to day, but the meaning was always the same. They left the mistress of the house in a certain commotion of mind when her old servants had bidden her good night and withdrawn. She had a way then of walking about the room, sometimes pausing as if to listen. There was deep silence about the Hewan, uplifted on its little brae, and with few houses near,—nothing to be heard except the distant murmur of the Esk, and the rustling of the trees. But the night has strange mysteries of sound for which no one can account. Sometimes something came that seemed like a step on the gravel outside, sometimes, fainter in the distance, what might have been the swing of the gate, sometimes a muffled knock as at the door. She knew them all well, and had been deceived by them a thousand times; nor was she undeceived yet, but would stop and raise her head and hold her breath, waiting for perhaps some second sound to follow to give meaning to it. But there never came any second sound, or at least there never was, never had been, any meaning in them. She listened, holding up her head, and then drooped it again, going on upon her little measured walk. “At ainy moment!” she would say sometimes to herself.

Over the front door of the cottage, which was not without a little pretension, there was what we used to call a fanlight: and in this summer and winter every night a light burned till morning. People shook their heads at it as a piece of foolish sentiment and very extravagant; and Andrew grudged a little the trouble it caused him. But there it burned all the year round, every night through.

CHAPTER II.

In the summer evenings Mrs Ogilvy sat on the bench outside the parlour window. I have never forgotten the sort of rapture with which the long summer evenings in Scotland impressed my own mind when I rediscovered them, so to speak, after a long interval of absence. The people who know Scotland only in the autumn know them not. By that time all things have grown common, the surprises of the year are over; but in June those long, soft, pearly, rosy hours which are neither night nor day, which melt by indescribable degrees out of the glory of the sunset into everything that is soft and fair, through every tint and shining colour and mingling of lights, until they reach that which is inconceivable—surround us with a heavenly atmosphere all their own, the fusion of every radiance, the subdual of every shade. There are no shadows in that wonderful light any more than there is any sun. The midnight sun must be a very spectacular sort of performance in comparison. To people who live in it always, however, it will probably appear no such great thing.

Mrs Ogilvy was not aware that there was anything that was not most ordinary in these June nights. She loved them, but knew no reason why. She sat in the sweet air, in the silence, sometimes feeling herself as if suspended between air and sky, floating softly in space with the movement of the world: and in her thoughts she was able even sometimes to detach herself from Then and Now, those two dreadful limits of our consciousness, and to catch a glimpse of life as it is rounded out, and some consciousness of the beginning and the end, and the sequence and connection of all things. Sometimes: but perhaps not very often, for these gleams of discovery are but gleams, and fly like the flashes of lightning which suddenly reveal to us a broad country, a noble city lost in the darkness. On such occasions the great sphere overhead, the great landscape stretching into distance, the glimpses of houses, great and small, amid the warm surrounding of the trees, the murmur of the Esk low in the glen, filling all the air with sound, affected her with an extraordinary calm. She used to think sometimes that this was the Peace that passeth understanding which descended upon her, hushing all her thoughts, stilling every sigh. It came but seldom in that height of blessing, but often in a less perfect way, as she sat and pondered upon the great still world revolving round, and she an atom in the boundless breadth of being, which by-and-by would drop, while the world went on.

But at other times it appeared to her more strange still that in all these miles and miles of distance, of solid earth and growing trees, and the hopeful harvests that were coming, there was one little thing, so little in fact, so insignificant in the midst of all, that was throbbing and throbbing and disturbing the quiet, unmoved by the peace of the sky and the earth and all the beautiful things between them—thinking its own small thoughts, and troubling, and living—till all the quiet throbbed and thrilled with it, the one thing that was out of harmony. The centre of her thoughts, or rather the cause of them all, night and day, was a thing that had happened fifteen years ago, a thing that most people had forgotten—a small matter to the world—just the going away of a heedless young man. It was not that she was always thinking of him, for her thoughts rambled and wandered through all the heavens and earth; but that he was the centre of all, the pivot on which they turned, the beginning and the end of everything. He had gone away—he had left his home, having already erred and strayed—and he had been heard of no more. She was not complaining or finding fault with God for it: she would sometimes wonder with a little wistfulness why God never listened to her, did not somewhere seize that wandering boy and bring him back—to satisfy her before she died. But then there were many things to be considered, Mrs Ogilvy knew and acknowledged to herself in the philosophy that had grown out of her much thinking. Robert was not a bairn, nor was God a mere benevolent patron, to seize the lad without rhyme or reason, and set him back there, because she wearied Him with crying. She had wanted God to be that, many times in her long period of trouble; but by dint of time and thought a different sense of things had come to her. God was not a good fairy: He was the great God of heaven and earth. He had Robert to think of as well as his mother, and thousands and millions of other things. Often in the weariness of her heart she asked nothing for Robert, said nothing, but sat there before the Lord with the boy’s name on her heart put before Him. And that was all she was doing now.

Of all that landscape there was one point to which her eyes turned the oftenest, and, which drew her away out of herself, as if by some charm of movement and going. And that was the piece of road which lay at the foot of the brae, with her own garden-gate opening into it, and the two lines of the holly-hedges on either side. Often she would be drawn back from her thinking by the sight of a figure on the road, which turned out to be a very common figure,—sometimes a beggar, or a man with a pack, a travelling merchant, or, more familiar still than that, a postman on his way home, or a lad that had been working later than usual. But whatever the man was, the sight of him always gave Mrs Ogilvy a sharp sensation. “At any moment!” she had said to herself so long that it had entered into her very soul. “At any moment!”—she was conscious of this night and day. Through all that she was doing she had always one ear listening for any new step or sound. And you may think how much more strong that habitual watchfulness was when she looked out in the evening, the time when everybody comes home, upon the road by which he must come, if he ever came. A hundred times and a hundred more she had watched that road, with her eyes

“Busy in the distance shaping things
That made her heart beat thick.”

Often and often she had seen a man detach himself from the white strip of the road, and heard her own gate click and swing, and watched a head moving upward over the line of the hedge. But it never was any one except the most simple, the most naturally to be expected visitor—perhaps the minister, perhaps Mr Miller from the paper-mill, perhaps some friend of Andrew’s and Janet’s. Her heart beat in her ears, in her throat, for a dreadful moment, and then stood still. It was not he: how should it? She rose up with no heart at all, everything stopped and hushed, and said, “How are you to-night, Mr Logan? What a bonnie evening for a walk,” or “How are you, Mr Miller; sit down and take a rest after your climb.” She said nothing about her disappointment; and, indeed, who could say she was disappointed? It just was not Robbie: and she had no more reason to think that it would be him than that the night would suddenly turn into day.

On this particular evening it was Mr Logan, the minister, who gave her this thrill of strong expectation, this disappointment—which was not a disappointment. He found nothing that was out of the way in her peaceful looks, neither the one sensation nor the other, but sat down beside her, pleased with this conclusion to his summer evening’s walk, and the delightful air and pleasant view, and the calm of the Hewan, in which everybody said there was such an atmosphere of repose and peace. Mr Logan was a country minister of what is now called the old school. He was not a man who had ever thought of making innovations or disturbing the old order of affairs. His services were just the same as they had been when he was ordained some thirty years before. He had baptised a great part of his parishioners, and married the others, so that there were only the quite old folk, patriarchs of the parish, who could remember the time when he was first “placed” at Eskholm, and opposed by some, though always “well likit” by others. He was considered by Mrs Ogilvy and many ladies of the parish to be a very personable man, comely in his grey hair, with a good presence and a good voice, and altogether a wyss-like man. This description, which is so common in Scotland, has nothing to do with the wisdom of the person described, who may be very wyss-like without being at all wise. Mr Logan sat down and stretched out discreetly his long legs. He had the shadow, or rather the subdued light, of a smile hovering about his face. He looked as if he had something agreeable to tell.

“And how is Susie?” Mrs Ogilvy said.

“Susie,” he said, with a change of expression which did not look quite so genuine as the lurking smile. “Oh, Susie, poor thing, she is just in her ordinary; but that is not very well——”

“Not well! Susie? But she has just been wonderful in her health and her cheery ways.”

“Ay, ay! she has kept up to the outside of her strength; but I have never thought she was equal to it. You will do me the justice to remember that I always said that. These big boys are too much for her; and now that they’re coming and going to Edinburgh every day, and all the trouble of getting them off in the morning, with sandwiches for George who is in his office, and a piece for Walter and Jamie who are at the school: and the two little ones all the day at home, and me on the top of all, that am perhaps accustomed to have too much attention paid to me——”

The lurking smile came forth again, much subdued, so that nobody could ask the minister brutally, “What are you smiling at?”

“Dear me,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “I am very much astonished. I have always thought there was nobody like Susie for managing the whole flock.”

“She is a good girl, a very good girl; but it’s too much for her, Mrs Ogilvy. I’ve always said so. She takes after her mother, and you know my—wife was far from strong.”

The little pause he made before that simple word wife was as when a man who has married a second time says “my first wife.”

Mrs Ogilvy was startled and stared; but she did not take any notice of this alarming peculiarity. She said, “I cannot think Susie delicate, Mr Logan. She has none of the air of it. And her mother at her age——”

“Ah, her mother at her age! I must take double care that nothing interferes with Susie. It is an anxious position for a man to have a family to look after that is deprived of a mother’s care.”

“It is so, no doubt,” said Mrs Ogilvy; “but with Susie——”

“Poor thing! who just strains every faculty she has. There are some women who do these kind of things with no appearance of effort,” said Mr Logan, shaking his head a little. “You will have heard there was a marriage in the parish yesterday. They would fain have had it in the church, in their new-fangled way. But I said our auld kirk did not lend itself to that sort of thing, and I would like it better in their own drawing-room, or if they preferred it, mine.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “I heard of it. The English family that have taken the little house near the Dean. I did not think it was big enough to have a drawing-room.”

“Well, an English family is rather a misnomer: they can scarcely be called English, though they come from the south—and a family you can call it no longer, for this was the last daughter, and there’s nothing but Mrs Ainslie herself left.”

“She’s a well-put-on, well-mannered woman, and well-looking too: but I know nothing more about her,” Mrs Ogilvy said.

“She is all that,” replied the minister, with a little fervour unnecessary in the circumstances. “We were at the little entertainment after, Susie and me. Everything was just perfectly done, and nobody neglected, and without a bit of fuss or flutter such as is general in these cases——”

“Do you think it is general?” said Mrs Ogilvy, with that natural and instantaneous impulse of self-defence which is naturally awakened by excessive praise bestowed upon the better methods of a stranger. “We are maybe not much used to grand entertainments in a landward parish like this, where there are not many grand folk.”

“Oh, there was nothing particularly grand about it,” said the minister, with the air of lingering pleasantly in recollection over an agreeable subject. “These simple sort of things are so much better; but it takes a clever person to see just what is adapted to a country place. I was saying to Susie this morning it’s a grand thing to bring people together like you—and no expense to speak of when you know how to go about it——”

“And what did Susie think?” Mrs Ogilvy asked.

“My dear lady,” said the minister, “nobody will say I am one to take down the ladies or give them a poor character; but they are maybe slower of the uptake than men—especially when it’s another lady, and one with gifts past the common, that is held up for their example.”

“I thought you were too wise a man to hold up anybody for an example.”

“You’re always sensible, Mrs Ogilvy. That is just what I should have remembered: but perhaps I am too open in my speech at all times. I’ve come to speak to Susie as if she knew things and the ways of the world just as well as me.”

Mr Logan was a little vague about his pronouns, which arose not from want of grammar, but from national prejudice or prepossession.

“And so she does,” said Mrs Ogilvy, with a little surprise. “She’s young still, the dear lassie; but it’s very maturing to the mind to be in a position like hers, and she is just one of the most reasonable persons I know.”

“Ah, yes,” said the minister, with a sigh, which did not interrupt the lurking smile; “but it’s a very different thing to have a companion of your own age.”

At this she began to look at him with more attention than she had as yet shown, and perceived that there was a little flush more than ordinary on the minister’s face. Had he come to make any revelation? Mrs Ogilvy had all the natural prejudices, and she was resolved that at least she would do nothing to help him out. She sat demurely and looked at him, while he, leaning forward, traced lines upon the gravel with the end of his stick. The faint imbecility of the smile about his lips, made of vanity and pleasure and a little shame, always irritating to women, called forth an ironical watchfulness on her part.

“There is but one way of having that,” he continued; “a man’s a sad wreck in many cases when he’s left a widower, as you may say, in the middle of his days—

‘My strength he weakened in the way,
My days of life he shorten-ed.’

This is not the usual sense in which the words are used, but it just comes to that. You will know by yourself, Mrs Ogilvy. You were widowed young.”

“I have never taken myself to be a rule for other folk,” she said.

“Well, you don’t do that; but still how are you to judge of other folk’s feelings but according to what you feel yourself?”

The lady made no reply. No, she would not help him! if he had any ridiculous thing to say to her, he should muddle through it the best way he could. She would not hold out a little finger to help him up to dry land.

“Well,” he said, after a pause, with a little sigh, “to return to Susie. She’s not equal to her present charge, not equal to it at all. Three big boys on her hands, and the two little ones, not to count all the family correspondence with the others in India and Australia, and all that. There is a great deal of care connected with a large family that people never think of.” He paused for sympathy, but it was not a point upon which his present listener could speak: he went on with a slight and momentary feeling that she was selfish not to have entered into this trouble, notwithstanding that it was so different from her own. “And these growing laddies want a firm hand over them—they want authority—not just a sister that they can tease and fleech—— I maybe ought from the first,” he said, slowly and tentatively, “to have taken the burden more upon myself.”

“It would have left less burden upon Susie; but I think for my part she is quite equal to it,” Mrs Ogilvy said.

When a man condescends to blame himself, he expects as his natural due that he should be reassured. Mr Logan felt that his old friend and parishioner, to whom he had come half for sympathy, half for encouragement, was not nearly so sympathetic a person as he thought.

“I see we’ll not agree in that; and I am sure I hope you’re the one that is in the right. Well,” he said, getting up slowly, “I’m afraid I must be going. This is a long walk for me at this hour of the night; and they’ll be waiting for me at home.”

“You’ll let me know,” Mrs Ogilvy said, as she walked with him along the little platform round the plot of grass. “You’ll let me know—when things have gone further.”

“When things have gone further?” he cried, with a sudden redness and look of surprise: then added, shaking his head, “What things there are to go further, and how far they can go, is a mystery to me. You must be referring to something in your own mind.”

And the good-night was a little formal with which he went away.

It was time to go in. The light was fading at last, growing a little paler, and ten had struck on the big clock. The lamp had been lighted in the drawing-room for Mrs Ogilvy to read the chapter by, though there was no real need for it. Janet, who had come out for her mistress’s work and her footstool, lingered, as was her wont, before she “cried upon” Andrew for that concluding ceremonial of the day.

“Did you ever hear that there was any word of the minister——? But perhaps I should not speak on the small authority I have,” Mrs Ogilvy said.

“Speak freely, mem; I can aye bear it—and better from you than from some other folk.”

Andrew had strong Free Church inclinations. He was given to disrespectful speech of the ministers of the Auld Kirk in general, and of Mr Logan in particular, calling him a dumb dog that could not bark—which roused Janet to her inmost soul. She was not satisfied even with her mistress, though she had never forsaken the Kirk of her fathers. Janet bore her burden, as the only perfectly orthodox person in the house, with great solemnity and a sense of suffering for the right. “Say what you will, mem; you may be sure I will have heard worse. I can put up with it,” Janet said.

“You are just a very foolish person to speak in that tone to me. Am I one to find fault with the minister without cause? Nor am I finding fault with him. He has a right to do it if he likes. I would not say that it was expedient.”

“Eh, mem, if ye would but put me out of my pain! What is it? He is a douce man, that would do harm to nobody. What is he going to do?”

“Indeed, Janet, I cannot tell. It is just some things he said. Was there ever any lady’s name named—or that caused a silly laugh, or made folk speak?”

“Named!” said Janet,—“with our minister? ’Deed, and that there have been—every woman born that he has ever said a ceevil word to. You ken little of country clashes, mem, if you’re surprised at that. Your ainsel’ for one, and we ken the truth there is in that.”

“They were far to seek if they named me,” said Mrs Ogilvy, drawing herself up with dignity; “but there is a lady he is very full of. I do not ask you to inquire, for I hate gossip; but if it should come your way from any of the neighbours, I would like to hear what they say. Poor Susie! he says she is not able for so much work, that he is feared she will go like her mother. Now, she’s not like her mother either in that or any other thing. There’s trouble brewing for my poor Susie—if you hear anything, let me know.”

“And you never heard who the leddy was?” Janet said.

“I have heard much more—a great deal more,” Mrs Ogilvy cried, very inconclusively it must be allowed, “than I had any wish to hear!”

CHAPTER III.

This was the ordinary of the life at the Hewan. A great deal of solitude, a great deal of thought, an endless circling of mind and reflection round one subject which shadowed heaven and earth, and affected every channel in which the thoughts of a silent much-reasoning creature can flow: and at the same time much acquaintance with a crowd of small human events making up the life of the neighbourhood, with which, practically speaking, Mrs Ogilvy had nothing to do, yet with which, in the way of sympathy, advice, and even criticism, she had a great deal to do. Such half confidences as that of Mr Logan were brought to her continually—veiled disclosures made for the purpose of finding out how such and such things looked in the eyes of a woman who was very discreet, who never repeated anything that was said, and who had the power of intimating an opinion as veiled as the disclosure by delicate methods without putting it into words. She sat on her modest height, a little oracle wrapped in mystery as to her own inner life, impartial and observant as to that about her. How she had come to be an authority in the village it would be difficult to tell. She was not a person of noted family or territorial importance, which is a thing which tells for so much in Scotland. Perhaps it was chiefly because, since the great misfortune of her life, she had retired greatly from the observation of the parish, paying no visits, seeing only the people who went to see her, and as for her own affairs confiding in nobody, asking no sympathy—too proud in her love and sorrow even to allow that she was stricken, or that the dearest object of her life was the occasion of all her suffering. Neighbours had adjured her not “to make an idol” of her boy; and after the trouble came they had shaken their heads and assured her in the first publicity of the blow that God was a jealous God, and would not permit idolatry. To these speeches she had never made any reply: and scarcely any one to this day knew whether his mother had ever heard from Robert, or was aware of his movements and history. This position had been very impressive to the little community. It is a kind of pride with which in Scotland there is a great deal of sympathy.

On the other hand she had never rejected the appeal, tacit or open, of any one who came to her. The ladies of the village were almost a little servile in the court they paid to this old lady. They liked to know what Mrs Ogilvy thought of most things that went on, and to have her opinion of any stranger who settled among them; and if a rumour rose in the village, where rumours are so apt to rise, nobody knows how, there was sure to be a concourse in the afternoon, unpremeditated and accidental, of visitors eager to hear, but very diffident of being the first to ask, what the lady of the Hewan thought. Now the suggestion that the minister of Eskholm was about to make a second marriage, overturning the entire structure of life, displacing his daughter, who had been the mistress of the manse for many years, and inflicting a new and alien sway upon his big boys and his little girls, all flourishing under the cheerful sovereignty of Susie, was such an idea as naturally convulsed the parish from one end to the other. And there was little doubt that this was the question it was intended to discuss, when two or three of these ladies met without concert or premeditation in the afternoon at the Hewan; and Janet, half proud of the concourse, half angry at the trouble involved, had to spend all the warm afternoon serving the tea. If such was the purpose, however, it was entirely foiled by the unlooked-for appearance of a lady not at all like the ladies of Eskholm—a stranger, with what was considered to be a strongly marked “English accent,” the very person who was believed to have led the minister astray. The new-comer was good-looking, well-dressed, and extremely anxious to please; but as the only method of doing so which she could think of was to take the lead of the conversation, and to assume the air of the principal person, the expedient perhaps was not very successful. But for the moment even Mrs Ogilvy was silenced. She allowed her hand to be engulfed in the two hands of the stranger held out to her; and even gave to this frank and smiling personage in her consternation the place of honour, the seat by herself. The English lady, Mrs Ainslie, was not shy; and the little hostile assembly in the drawing-room of the Hewan, which had assembled to discuss the danger to the minister of this alarming siren in their midst, was changed into an audience of civil listeners, hearing the siren discourse.

“Oh, I like it beyond description,” she said. “It has become the most important place in the world to me! What a thing providence is! We came here thinking of nothing, meaning to spend six weeks, or at the most two months. And lo! this little country retreat, as we thought it, has become—I really can’t speak of it. My daughter, my only remaining one, the last—whom I have sometimes thought the flower of the flock——”

“You will have a number of daughters?”

“I am a grandmother these four or five years,” said the stranger, spreading out her hands, and putting herself forth, and her still fresh attractions, with a laugh and a pardonable boast. The ladies of Eskholm, all listening, felt a movement among them, a half-perceptible rustle, half of interest, half of envy. This was what it was to be English, to have a house in London, to move about the world, to introduce your girls and have them properly appreciated. How can you do that in a small country place? Some of these ladies were grandmothers too, and no older than Mrs Ainslie, but not one of them could have succeeded in declaring with that light and airy manner, See how young, how fresh, how unlike a grandmother I am! They looked at her with admiration modified by disapproval. They had meant to discuss her, to organise a defence against her; and here she was in command of everybody’s attention, the centre of the group!

“I am sure,” the lady continued, “it is the truest thing to say that marriages are made in heaven. We came here, Sophie and I, thinking of nothing—just for a few weeks in the summer: and here she is happily married! and, for all I know, I may spend the rest of my life in the place. She is my youngest, and to be near her is such an attraction. Besides, I have made such excellent friends—friends that I hope to keep all my life.”

“It is not everybody that is so fortunate,” Mrs Ogilvy said. None of the audience gave her the least assistance. They were fascinated by the confidence of the stranger, her pleasure in her own good fortune, and her freedom from any of that shyness which silenced themselves.

“Fortunate is really too little to say. Fancy, all my girls have made love-matches, and my sons-in-law adore their wives—and me. Now, I think that is a triumph. They are all fond of me. Don’t you think it is a triumph? If ever I feel inclined to boast, it is of that.”

“You are perhaps one of those,” said Mrs Ogilvy, somewhat grimly, “that, as we say in this country, a’body likes,—which is always a compliment—in one way.”

“That ah-body likes,” cried Mrs Ainslie with out-stretched hands, and an imitation which had a very irritating effect on the listeners. “Thank you a hundred times. It is a very pretty compliment, I think.”

“That awbody likes,” repeated Mrs Ogilvy, putting the vowel to rights. “We do not always mean it in just such a favourable sense.”

“It means a person that makes herself agreeable—with no real meaning in it,” said one.

“It means just a whillie-wha,” said another.

“It means a person, as they say, with a face like a fiddle, and no sincerity behind.”

Mrs Ainslie put up her hands again. “Oh, how am I to understand so much Scotch? I must ask Mr Logan,” she said.

And then again there was a pause. She dared to mention him! in the face of all those ladies banded together for his defence.

“What a delightful man he is,” she proceeded—“so learned, and so clever, and so good! I don’t know that I ever met with such a man. If he were only not so weighed down with these children. Dear Mrs Ogilvy, don’t you think it is dreadful to see a poor man so burdened. If he had only some one to keep order a little and take proper care of him. My heart sinks for him whenever I go into his house.”

Then there was a universal outcry, no longer capable of being controlled. “I cannot see that at all,” cried one. “He has Susie,” cried two or three together. “And where could he find a better? I wish, indeed, he was more worthy of such a daughter as that.”

It was an afternoon of surprises, and of the most sensational kind, for just as the ladies of Eskholm were warming to this combat, in which so much more was meant than met the eye, and, a little flushed with the heat of the afternoon and the tea and rising temper, were turning fiery looks toward the interloper, the door opened quietly, without any preliminary bell or even knock at the door, and Susie Logan herself—Susie, in behalf of whom they were all so ready to do battle—walked quietly in. Susie herself was quite calm, perfectly fresh, though she had been walking in the hottest hour of the day,—her white straw hat giving a transparent shade to the face, her cotton dress so simple, fresh, and clean. Nobody ever managed to look so fresh and without soil of any kind as Susie, whatever she might do.

There was a sudden pause again, a pause more dramatic than before, for the speakers had all been in full career, and some of them angry. Susie was very familiar at the Hewan—she was like the daughter of the house. She stopped short at the door and looked round, too much at home even to pretend that she did not see how embarrassing her appearance was. “I must have interrupted something?” she said.

“Oh no, no, Susie.” “How could you interrupt anything?” “You are just the one that would know the most of it, whatever we were discussing,” the ladies hastened to say, one taking the word from another. Mrs Ogilvy held out her hand without moving. “Come in, come in,” she said; “and ye can leave the door a little open, Susie, for we’re all flushed a little with the heat and with our tea.”

Mrs Ainslie was the one who gave Susan the most marked reception. She alone got up and took the girl in her arms. “How glad I should have been,” she said, “had I known I was to meet you here.”

“Now, Susie, I will not have this,” said Mrs Ogilvy; “sit down and do not make yourself the principal person, my dear; for I was thinking it was me this lady was glad to see. As we are talking of marriages, I would like to know if anybody can tell me about that big lassie Thomasine that I’ve been hearing of—a creature that has a cottage and a kailyard, and not much of a head on her shoulders. Will he be a decent man?”

There were some who shook their heads, and there were some who answered more cordially—Thomasine’s husband had been as much discussed in the parish as a more important alliance could have been. And under the shelter of this new inquiry most of the guests stole away. Mrs Ainslie herself was one of the last to go. She put once more an arm round Susie. “Are you coming, my love? I should like to walk with you,” she said.

“Not yet, Mrs Ainslie,” said Susan, with rising colour. She freed herself from the embrace with a little haste. “I have not seen Mrs Ogilvie for a long time.”

“You have not seen me either,” said the stranger playfully and tenderly, shaking a finger at her; “but it is right that new friends, even when they’re dear friends, should yield to old friends,” she said, with a little sigh and smile. She made a very graceful exit considering all things, and Susie’s presence prevented even the lingerer who went last from murmuring a private word as she had wished. When they were all gone, Susie placed herself by her old friend’s side.

“They worry you, these folk; they come to you with all their clashes. What was it this time? I saw they were stopped by me. It was not that old business,” said Susie, with a blush, “about Johnny Maitland? I thought that was all past and gone.”

“It was not that—it was rather this lady, this English person that stopped all their mouths before you came in. She is a very wyss-like woman, though her manners are strange to me. As I said to your father, she’s well put-on and well looking. Do you like her, Susie?”

“Me! I’ve no occasion not to like her, Mrs Ogilvy.”

“I was not asking that. Do you like her, Susie?”

Upon which Susie began to laugh. “What can I say?—

‘I dinna like ye, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I canna tell.’

I’ve no occasion not to like her. She is always very kind, a little too kind, to me—I am not fond of all that kissing—but it is perhaps just her way. I am not very fond of her, to tell the truth.”

“Nor am I, Susie; but she is maybe well enough if we were not prejudiced.”

“Oh yes, she is well enough,—she is more than that; and papa thinks there is nobody like her,” she added, with a laugh.

“Ah! your papa has an opinion on the subject?”

“And why not? He has a great eye for the ladies. Did you not know that? I think I like her the less because he makes so much of her. There was that party she had for the marriage, I never hear the end of it. It was all so nice, and so little trouble, and no fuss, and no expense, and so forth. How can he tell it was no expense?—all the things were sent out from Edinburgh!” said Susie, offended in her pride of housekeeping; “and as for the sandwiches and things, I have seen the very same in Edinburgh parties, and not so very new either. I could make them perfectly myself!”

“My dear, that is the way of men,” said Mrs Ogilvy; “a bit of bread-and-butter in a strange place they will take for a ferlie: whereas it’s only a piece for the bairns at home.”

“Oh, papa is not so bad as that,” said Susie; “and I’m very silly to mind. Now, just you lean back in your big chair and be quiet a little; and I will go ben to Janet and bring you a little new-made tea.”

“I like to see you do it, Susie. I like to take it from your hand. It is not for the tea——”

“No, it is not for the tea,” said the girl; and, though she was not fond of kissing, as she said, she touched Mrs Ogilvy’s old soft cheek tenderly with her fresh lips, and went away briskly on her errand with a tear in her eye. Perhaps it is something of a misnomer to call Susie Logan a girl. I fear she must have been thirty or a little more; but she had never left her home, and though she was full of experience, she retained all the freshness and openness of youth. Her hazel eyes were limpid and mildly bright; her features good if not remarkable; her colour fresh as a summer morning. Nowhere could she go without carrying a sense of youth and life with her; and here in this still existence at the Hewan among the old people she was doubly young, the representative of all that was wanting to make that house bright. She alone could make the mistress yield to this momentary indulgence, and permit herself to look tired and to rest. And for her Janet joyfully boiled the kettle over again, though she had just been congratulating herself on having finished for the day.

Susan went back and administered the tea, that cordial which is half for the body and half for the mind, but which swallowed amid a crowd of visitors fulfils neither purpose: and then she seated herself by Mrs Ogilvy’s side. “How good it is to feel they’re all gone away and we are just left to our two selves!”

“Have you anything particular to say to me, Susie?”

“Oh no, nothing particular; everything is just in its ordinary: the little ones are sometimes rather a handful, and if papa would get them a governess I would be thankful. They mean no harm, the little things; but the weather is warm and the day is long, and they are not fond of their lessons—neither am I,” said Susie, with a laugh, “if the truth were told.”

“And you are finding them a little too much for you—that is what your father was saying——”

“I find them too much for me! did papa say that?” cried Susie, alarmed; “that was never, never in my head. I may grumble a little, half in fun; but too much for me, Mrs Ogilvy! me that was born to it, the eldest daughter! such a thing was never, never in my mind——”

“I told him so, my dear, but he would not believe me; he just maintained it to my face that it was too much for you, and your health was beginning to fail.”

“What would he mean by that?” said Susie, sitting up very upright on her chair. A shadow came over her brightness. “Oh, I hope he has not got any new idea in his head,” she cried.

“Maybe he will be thinking of a governess for the little ones, Susie.”

“It might be that,” she acknowledged in subdued tones. “And then,” she added, with again a sudden laugh, “I heard that woman—no, no, I never meant to speak of her so—I heard Mrs Ainslie saying to him it would be a good thing. I would rather not have the easement than get it through her hands.”

“Oh fie! Susie, fie! she would have no ill motive: you must not take such things into your head.”

“It is she that makes me feel as if it were too much,” cried Susie, “coming in at all hours following me about the house. I get so tired of her that I am tired of everything. I could just dance at the sight of her: she puts me out of my senses; and always pitying me that want none of her pity! It must be kindness, I suppose,” said Susie, grudgingly; “but then I wish she would not be so kind.” After this there was a pause. The talk came to an end all at once. Mrs Ainslie and her doings dropped out of it as if she had gone behind a veil; and Susie looked in her old friend’s face, with the tenderest of inquiring looks, a question that needed not to be spoken.

“No word still, no word?” she rather looked than said.

“Never a word: not one, not one!” the elder woman replied.

Susie put her head down on Mrs Ogilvy’s knee, and her cheek upon her friend’s hand, and then gave way to a sudden outburst of silent tears, sobbing a little, like a child. Mrs Ogilvy shed no tear. She patted the bowed head softly with her hand, as if she had been consoling a child. “The time’s very long,” she said,—“very long, and never a word.”

After a while Susie raised her head. “I must, perhaps, not be very well after all,” she said, with an attempt at a smile; “or why should I cry like that? It is just that I could not help thinking and minding. It was about this time of the year——”

“The fifteenth of this month,” Mrs Ogilvy said; “to-morrow, and then it’ll be fifteen years.”

They sat for a little together saying nothing; and then Susie exclaimed, as if she could not contain herself, “But he’ll come back—I’m just as sure Robbie will come back! He will give you no warning; he was never one for writing. You will just hear his step on the road, and he will be here.”

“That is what I think myself,” Mrs Ogilvy said.

And while they were sitting together silent, there suddenly came into the silence the click of the gate and the sound of a step. And they both started, for a moment almost believing that he had come.

CHAPTER IV.

The continued disappointment, which was no disappointment but only the fall of a fancy, a bubble of fond imagination in which there was no reality at all—happened once more, while these two ladies sat together and listened. And then the shadow of a man crossed the open window—a little man—who, not knowing he was seen, paused to wipe his bald head and recover his breath before he rang the bell at the open door. The house was all open, fearing nothing, the sunshine and atmosphere penetrating everywhere.

“It is Mr Somerville, my man of business. It will only be something about siller,” Mrs Ogilvy said in a low tone.

“I will go away, then,” said Susie. She paused a little, holding her old friend’s hands. “And if it’s any comfort,” she said, “when you’re sitting alone and thinking, to mind that there is one not far away that is thinking too—and believing——”

“It is a comfort, Susie—God bless you for it, my dear——”

“Well, then, there are two of us,” she said, with a smile beaming out of the tearfulness of her face, “and it will be easier when this weary month is past.”

Susie, in her fresh summer dress, with her sweet colour and her pleasant smile, met, as she went out, the old gentleman coming in. She did not know him, but gave him a little bow as she passed, with rural politeness and the kindness of nature. Susie was not accustomed to pass any fellow-creature without a salutation. She knew every soul in the parish, and every soul in the parish knew her. She could not cross any one’s path without dropping, as it were, a flower of human kindness by the way, except, of course, when she was in Edinburgh or any other large and conventional place, where she only thought her goodwill to all whom she met. The visitor, coming from that great capital and used to the reticences of town life, was delighted with this little civility. He seized his hat, pulling it once more off his bald head, and went into the Hewan uncovered, as if he had been going into the presence of the Queen. It gave him a little courage for his mission, which, to tell the truth, was not a very cheerful mission, nor one which he had undertaken with any alacrity. It was not that Mrs Ogilvy’s income had sustained any diminution, or that he had a tale of failing dividends and bad investments to tell. What she had was invested in the soundest securities. It did not perhaps bring her in as much as would now be thought necessary; but it was as safe as the Bank of England, and the Bank of Scotland, and the British Linen Company, all rolled into one. Her income scarcely varied a pound year by year. There was very little for her man of business to do but to receive the modest dividends and send her the money as she required it. She would have nothing to do with banks and cheque-books. She liked always to have a little money in the house—but there was little necessity for frequent meetings between her and the manager of her affairs. He would sometimes come in on rare occasions when he had taken a long walk into the country: but Mr Somerville was not so young as he once had been, and took long walks no more. Therefore she looked at him not with anxiety but with a little curiosity when he sat down beside her. She was far too polite to put, even into a look, the question, What may you be wanting? but it caused a little embarrassment between them for the first moment. She, however, was more at ease than he was—for she expected nothing more than some question or advice about money, and he knew that what he had to say was something of a much more troublous kind. This made him prolong a little the questions about health and the remarks on the weather which form the inevitable preliminaries of conversation with such old-fashioned folk. When they had complimented each other on the beautiful season, and the young crops looking so well, and new vegetables so good and plentiful, there came a little pause again. Mrs Ogilvy was leaning back a little in her chair, very peaceful, fearing no blow, when the old gentleman, after clearing his throat a great many times, began—

“You will remember, Mrs Ogilvy—it is a thing you would be little likely to forget—a commission that you charged me with, in confidence—it is now a number of years ago——”

She raised herself suddenly in her chair, and drew a long breath. The expression of her countenance changed in a moment. She said nothing, nor was it necessary: her look, the changed pose of her person leaning towards him, her two hands clasped together on the arm of her chair, were enough.

“You must not expect too much, my dear lady—it is perhaps nothing at all, perhaps another person altogether; but at least, for the first time, it appears to me that it is something in the shape of a clue. I have been very cautious, according to your directions, but all the same I have made many inquiries: and none of them have ever come to anything.”

“I know, I know.”

“This, if there’s anything in it, is no credit of mine, it is pure accident.” Mr Somerville paused here to feel in his pockets for something. He tried his breast-pocket, and his tail-pockets, and all the other mysterious places in which things can be hidden away. “I must have left it in my overcoat,” he said. “One moment, if you permit, and I’ll get it before I say more.”

Mrs Ogilvy made no movement, while she sat there and waited. She closed her eyes, and there came from the depths of her bosom a low sigh, which was something like the breath of patience concentrated and condensed. She was perfectly still when he went back again, full of apologies: after having made a great rustling and searching of pockets in the outer hall, he came back with a newspaper in his hand.

“We have a good deal of business with America,” he said. “I can scarcely tell you how it began. One of our clients had a son that went out, and got on very well in business, and one thing followed another; what with remittances home, and expenses out, and money for the starting of farms, and so forth,—and then being laid open to the temptation of American investments, which, as a rule, pay very well, and all our poor customers just give us no peace till we put their money on them. This makes it very necessary for us to know the state of the American stock market, and how this and that is going. You will not maybe quite understand, but so it is.”

“I understand,” Mrs Ogilvy said.

“And this one, you see, was sent to us a day or two ago with this object. It’s from one of the towns in what’s called the wild West, just a ramshackle sort of a place, half built, and not a comfortable house in it. But they’ve got a newspaper, such as it is. And really valuable to us for the last week or two, showing the working of a great scheme.”

Would the man never be done? He laid the newspaper across his knee, and pointed his words with little gestures made over it. A glance would have been enough to show her what it was. But no, let patience have its perfect work. By moments she closed her eyes not to see him, and spoke not a word.

“Well, you see, the business of overlooking these American investments comes upon me; and I get a great many of their papers to glance at—trashy things, full of personal gossip, the most outrageous nonsense. I don’t often look beyond the share lists. But this morning, when I first came into the office, this thing was lying on my table. I had glanced at it, and taken what was of use in it yesterday. It’s just a wonder how it got there again. I gave another glance at it by pure chance, if you’ll believe me, as I slipped on my office-coat. And my eye was caught by a name. Well, it was only an alias, among a lot of others; but I’ve been told that away there in these wild places you can never tell which may be a man’s real name—as like as not the fifth or sixth alias in a long line.”

He looked up at her by chance, and it seemed to him as if his client had fainted. Her face was drawn and perfectly white, the eyes half closed.

“Bless me!” he cried, starting up; “it’s been more than she could bear. What can I do?—some water, or maybe ring the bell.”

He was about to do this when she caught him with one hand, and with the other pointed to the paper. Something like “Let me hear it,” came from her half-closed lips.

“That I will! that I will!” he cried. It was a relief that she could speak and see. He took up the paper, and was—how long—a year? of finding the place.

“It’s just this,” he said; “it’s an account of a broil in which some of those wild fellows got killed: and among the lot of them that was present, there was one, an Englishman they say—but that’s nothing, for they call us all Englishmen abroad. Our fathers would never have stood it; but what can you do? it’s handiest when all’s said—an Englishman that had been about a ranch, and had been a miner, and had been a coach-driver, and I don’t know all what; but this is his name, ‘Jim Smith, alias Horse-breaking Jim, alias James Jones, alias Bob the Devil, alias,’” here he held up his finger to arrest her attention, “‘Robert Ogilvy. It is suspected that the last may be his real name.’”

Mrs Ogilvy was incapable of speech. She signed for the paper, raising herself a little in her chair.

“That is just all there is: you would not understand the story. I’ve just carefully read it to you. Well, madam, if you will have it.” The old gentleman was much disturbed. He let her take the paper because he could not resist it, and then he went of his own accord and rang the bell. “Will ye bring a little wine, or even a drop of brandy?” he said, going to meet Janet at the door, “if your mistress ever takes it. She has had a bit shock, and she’s not very well.”

She had got the paper in her hands. The touch of that real thing brought her back more or less to herself. She sat up and held it to the light, and read it every word. There was more of it than Mr Somerville had read. It was an account of a tumult at which murder had been done—no accident, but cold-blooded murder, and the names given were of men more or less involved. The last of these, perhaps, therefore, the least guilty, was this man of many names, Robert Ogilvy—oh, to see it there in such a record! The bonnie name, all breathing of youth and cheerful life, with the face of the fresh boy looking at her through it!—Robbie, her Robbie, alias Jim, alias Bob, alias—— She clasped her hands together with the paper between them, and “O Lord God!” she said, in tones wrung out of her very heart.

“Just swallow this, swallow this, my dear lady; it will give you strength. She has had a bit shock. She will be better, better directly. Just do everything you can for her, like a good woman. I was perhaps rash. But she’ll soon come to herself.”

“I am myself, Mr Somerville, I am not needing any of your brandy. I cannot bide the smell of it. Janet, take it way. I have got some news that I will tell you after. Mr Somerville, I will have to take time to think of it. I cannot get it into my mind all at once.”

“No, no,” he said, soothingly, “it was not to be expected. I was too rash. I should have broken it to you more gently: a wee drop of wine, if you will not have the brandy?—though good spirit is always the best.”

“I want nothing,” she said; “just give me a moment to think.” And then out of that bitterness of death there came a low cry—“Oh, his bonnie name, his bonnie name!”

“Ay,” said the old gentleman, full of sympathy, “that is just what I thought—my old friend’s name, douce honest man! that never did anything to be ashamed of in all his days.”

The blood came back to her face with a rush.

“And how can you tell,” she said, “whether there’s anything to be ashamed of there? You said yourself it was a wild place. They cannot be on their p’s and q’s as we are, choosing their company. I am a decent woman myself, and have been, as you say, all my days; but who could tell what kind of folk I might have got among had I been there?”

She rose up and began to walk about the room in sudden excitement. “He would interfere to help the weak one,” she said. “If there was a weak side, he would be upon that; he would be helping somebody. Him—murder a man! You were his father’s friend, I know; but did you ever see Robbie Ogilvy, my son?—and, if not, man! how daur you speak, and speak of shame and my laddie together, to me?”

Mr Somerville was so taken by surprise that he could not find a word to say. “I thought,” he began—and then he stopped short. Had not shame already been busy with Robbie Ogilvy’s name? But however much he had been in possession of his faculties and recollections, silence was the wiser way.

“There is one thing,” Mrs Ogilvy said; “if this be true, and if it be him—there will be a trial, and he will need defence. He must have the best defence, the best advocate. You will send somebody out at once without losing a day. Oh, I’m old, I’m weak, I’m an old woman that knows nothing! I’ve never been from home. But what is all that. What is all that to my Robbie? I think, Mr Somerville, I will go myself.”

“You must not think of that,” he cried. “A wild unsettled country, and miles and miles, in all probability, to be done on horseback, and no certainty where to find him—if it is him—on one side of the continent or the other. For, you will see, none of them were taken. Not the chief person, who will doubtless be a very different sort of person, nor—any of the others. They will all be away from that place like the lightning. They will not bide to be put through an interrogatory or stand their trial. I will tell you what I will do. I will write to our correspondents most particularly. I will bid them employ the sharpest fellow they can find about there to follow him and run him down.”

“Run him down!” she cried, with a mixture of horror and indignation,—“my boy! You use words that are ill chosen and drive me out of my senses,” she added, with a certain dignity. “But you are well meaning, Mr Somerville, and not an injudicious person in business so far as I have seen. You will write to no correspondents. There must be sharp fellows here, and men that have been about the world. You will send one of them. If I go myself or not, I will take a little time to think; but without losing a day or a moment you will send one of them.”

“It will be a great expense, Mrs Ogilvy—and the other way would be better. I might even cable to our correspondents: that means telegraph. It’s another of their new-fangled words.”

“The one need not hinder the other. You can do both. Cable, as you call it——”

“It is very expensive,” he said.

“Man!” cried Mrs Ogilvy, towering over him, “what am I caring about expense?—expense! when it’s him that is in question. It will be the quickest way. Cable or telegraph, or whatever you call it; and since there’s nothing that can be done to-night, send the man wherever you may find him—to-morrow.”

“You go very fast,” he cried, panting as if for breath.

“And so would you, if it was your only son, your only child, that was in question. And I will think. I will perhaps set out to-morrow myself.”

“To-morrow is the Sabbath-day,” said Mr Somerville, with an indescribable sensation of relief.

This damped Mrs Ogilvy’s spirit for the moment. “It’s not that I would be kept back by the Sabbath-day,” she said; “for Him that was the Lord of the Sabbath, He just did more on that day than any other, healing and saving: and would He put it against me? Oh no! I ken Him too well for that. But since it’s not a lawful day for travelling, and there’s few trains and boats, send your cable to-night, Mr Somerville. Let that be done at least, if it is the only thing we can do.”

“There will still be time; but I will have to hurry away,” said the old gentleman reluctantly, “to Edinburgh by the next train.”

And then there ensued a struggle in the mind of the hostess, to whom hospitality was second nature. “I did not think of that; and you’ve had a hot journey out here, and nothing to refresh you. Forgive me, that have been just wrapped up in my own concerns. You will stay and take—some dinner before you go back.”

“No, no,” he said; “it’s a terrible thing for you to refuse a dinner to a hungry man. You never did the like of that in your life before. But it’s best I should go. There’s a train in half an hour. I’ll take a glass of the wine you would not take, and I’ll be fresh again for my walk to the station. It’s not just so warm as it was.”

“You will stay to your dinner, Mr Somerville.”

“No; I could not swallow it, and you could not endure to see me eating it and losing time.”

“Then Andrew shall put in the pony, and drive you down to Eskholm,” Mrs Ogilvy said. This was a relief to her, in the unexampled contingency of sending a visitor unrefreshed from her house—a thing which perhaps had never happened in her life before.

She went out to her habitual place outside a little later, at her usual hour. She was not capable of saying anything to Janet, who followed her wistfully, putting herself forward to bring out her mistress’s cushion, her footstool, her book, her knitting, one after another, always hoping to be told what Mrs Ogilvy had promised to tell her after. But not a word did her mistress say. She did not even sit down as she usually did, but walked about, quickly at first, then with gradually slackening steps, sometimes pausing to look round, sometimes stooping to throw away a withered leaf, but always resuming that restless walk which was so unlike her usual tranquillity. She had her hand pressed upon her side, as one might press a handkerchief upon a wound. And indeed she had the stroke of a sword in her heart, and the life-blood flowing. Robert Ogilvy, Robbie Ogilvy, the bonnie name! and after the silence of fifteen years to hear it now as in the ‘Hue and Cry,’ at the end of all that long string of awful nicknames. It was only now that she had full time to realise it all. Yesterday at this time what would she not have given for any indication that he was living and where he was! She would have said she could bear anything only to know that he was safe, and to have some clue by which he could be found. And now she had both, and a wound gaping in her heart that required both her hands to cover it, to prevent her life altogether from welling away. Robert Ogilvy, Robert Ogilvy—oh, his bonnie name!

After a while, her forces wearing out, she sat down in her usual place, but not with her usual patience and calm. Was that what could be called an answer to her prayers?—the sudden revelation of her son, for whom she had cried to God for all these years night and day, in anguish and crime and danger? Oh, was this an answer? Her eyes wandered by habit to the landscape below and the road which she had watched so often, the white road, white with summer dust, upon which every passing figure showed. There was a passing figure now, walking slowly along as far as she could see. On another day she would have wondered who the man was. She took no interest in him now, but saw him pass and pass again as if it were the merest accident. It was not until she had seen him pass three or four times that her attention was roused. A big figure, not one she could identify with any of the usual passers-by, strangely clad, and carrying a cloak folded over one shoulder. A cloak? what could a man like that want with a cloak—an old-fashioned cumbrous thing. Whatever he wanted, he kept his face towards the Hewan. Sometimes he passed very slow, lingering at every step; sometimes very fast, as if he were pursued. Other figures went and came—the farmers’ gigs, a few carriages of the gentry going home. It was late, though it was still so light. What was that man doing loitering always there? Her attention was more and more drawn to the road. At last she saw that nobody except this one man was within sight, not a wheel audible, not a creature visible. The figure seemed to hesitate, and then all at once with a dart approached the gate, which swung at his touch. Was he coming here? Who was he? Long, long had she watched and waited. Was he coming home at last this June day,—this night of all nights? And who was he, who was he, the man that was coming? It will only be some person with a message—it will only be some gangrel person, Mrs Ogilvy said to herself.

CHAPTER V.

The footstep came slowly up the sloping path. The holly-hedges were high, and for some time nothing more was visible than a moving speck over the solid wall of green. There is something in awaiting in this way the slow approach of a stranger which affects the nerves, even when there is little expectation and no alarm in the mind. Mrs Ogilvy sat speechless and unable to move, her throat parched and dry, her heart beating wildly. Was it he? Was it some one pursuing him—some avenger of blood on his track? Was it no one at all—some silly messenger, some sturdy beggar, some one who would require Andrew to turn him away? These questions went through her head in a whirl, without any volition of hers. The last was the most likely. She waited with a growing passion and suspense, yet still in outward semblance as the rose-bush with all its buds showing white, which stood tranquilly in the dimness behind her. It was growing dark; or rather it was growing dim, everything still visible, but vaguely, as if a veil had dropped between the eye and what it saw. When the man came out at the head of the path, detached and separate from all the trees and their shadows, upon the little platform, a thrill came over the looker-on. He seemed to pause there for a moment, then advanced slowly.

A tall big man, loosely dressed so as to make his proportions look bigger: his features, which there would not in any case have been light enough to see, half lost in a long brown beard, and in the shade of the broad soft hat, partly folded back, which covered his head. He did not take that off or say anything, but came slowly, half reluctantly forward, till he stood before her. It seemed to Mrs Ogilvy that she was paralysed. She could not move nor speak. This strange figure came into the peaceful circle of the little house closing up for the night, separated from all the world—in silence, like a ghost, like a secret and mysterious Being whose coming meant something very different from the comings and goings of the common day. He stood all dark like a shadow before the old lady trembling in her chair, with her white cap and white shawl making a strange light in the dim picture. How long this moment of silence lasted neither knew. It became intolerable to both at the same moment. She burst forth, “Who are you, who are you, man?” in a voice which shook and went out at the end like the flame of a candle in the air. “Have you forgotten me—altogether?” he said.

“Altogether?” she echoed, painfully raising herself from her chair. It brought her a little nearer to him, to the brown beard, the shadowed features, the eyes which looked dimly from under the deep shade of the hat. She stood for a moment tottering, trembling, recognising nothing, feeling the atmosphere of him sicken and repel her. And then there came into that wonderful pause a more wonderful and awful change of sentiment, a revolution of feeling. “Mother!” he said.

And with a low cry Mrs Ogilvy fell back into her chair. At such moments what can be done but to appeal to heaven? “Oh my Lord God!” she cried.

She had looked for it so long, for years and years and years, anticipated every particular of it: how she would recognise him afar off, and go out to meet him, like the father of the prodigal, and bring him home, and fill the house with feasting because her son who had been lost was found: how he would come to her all in a moment, and fling himself down by her side, with his head in her lap, as had been one of his old ways. Oh, and a hundred ways besides, like himself, like herself, when the mother and the son after long years would look each other in the face, and all the misery and the trouble would be forgotten! But never like this. He said “Mother,” and she dropped away from him, sank into the seat behind her, putting out neither hands nor arms. She did not lose consciousness—alas! she had not that resource, pain kept her faculties all awake—but she lost heart more completely than ever before. A wave of terrible sickness came over her, a sense of repulsion, a desire to hide her face, that the shadows might cover her, or cover him who stood there, saying no more: the man who was her son, who said he was her son, who said “Mother” in a tone which, amid all these horrible contradictions, yet went to her heart like a knife. Oh, not with sweetness! sharp, sharp, cutting every doubt away!

“Mother,” he said again, “I would have sworn you would not forget me, though all the world forgot me.”

“No,” she said, like one in a dream. “Can a mother forget her——” Her voice broke again, and went out upon the air. She lifted her trembling hands to him. “Oh Robbie, Robbie! are you my Robbie?” she said in a voice of anguish, with the sickness and the horror in her heart.

“Ay, mother,” he said, with a tone of bitterness in his voice; “but take me in, for I’m tired to death.”

And then a great compunction awoke within her: her son, for whom she had longed and prayed all these years—and instead of running out to meet him, and putting the best robe on him, a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, he had to remind her that he was tired to death! She took him by the hand and led him in, and put him in the big chair. “I am all shaken,” she said: “both will and sense, they are gone from me: and I don’t know what I am doing. Robbie, if ye are Robbie——”

“Do you doubt me still, mother?” He took off his hat and flung it on the floor. Though he was almost too much broken down for resentment, there was indignation in his tone. And then she looked at him again, and even in the dimness recognised her son. The big beard hid the lower part of his face, but these were Robbie’s eyes, eyes half turned away, sullen, angry—as she had seen him look before he went away, when he was reproved, when he had done wrong. She had forgotten that ever he had looked like that, but it flashed back to her mind in a moment now. She had forgotten that he had ever been anything but kind and affectionate and trusting, easily led away, oh, so easily led away, but nothing worse than that. Now it all came back upon her, the shadows that there had been to that picture even at its best.

“Robbie,” she said, with faltering lips, “Robbie, oh, my dear! I know you now,” and she put those trembling lips to his forehead. They were cold—it could not feel like a kiss of love; and she was trembling from head to foot, chiefly with emotion, but a little with fear. She could not help it: her heart yearned over him, and yet she was afraid of this strange man who was her son.

He did not attempt to return the salutation in any way. He said drearily, “I have not had bite nor sup for twelve hours, nothing but a cup of bad coffee this morning. My money’s all run out.”

“Oh, my laddie!” she cried, and hurried to the bell but did not ring it, and then to the door. But before she could reach the door, Janet came in with the lamp. She came unconscious that any one was there, with the sudden light illuminating her face, and making all the rest of the room doubly dark to her. She did not see the stranger sitting in the corner, and gave a violent start, almost upsetting the lamp as she placed it on the table, when with a half laugh he suddenly said, “And here’s Janet!” out of the shade. Janet turned round like lightning, with a face of ashes. “Who’s that,” she cried, “that calls me by my name?”

“We shall see,” he said, rising up, “if she knows me better than my mother.” Mrs Ogilvy stood by with a pang which words could not describe, as Janet flung up her arms with a great cry. It was true: the woman did recognise him without a moment’s hesitation, while his mother had held back—the woman, who was only the servant, not a drop’s blood to him. The mother’s humiliation could not be put into words.

“Janet,” she said severely, mastering her voice, “set out the supper at once, whatever is in the house. It will be cold; but in the meantime put the chicken to the fire that you got for to-morrow’s dinner: the cold beef will do to begin with: and lose not a moment. Mr Robert,”—she paused a moment after those words,—“Mr Robert has arrived suddenly, as you see, and he has had a long journey, and wants his supper. You can speak to him after. Now let us get ready his food.”

She went out of the room before her maid. She would not seem jealous, or to grudge Janet’s ready and joyful greeting. She went into the little dining-room, and began to arrange the table with her own hands. “Go you quick and put the chicken to the fire,” she said. Was she glad to escape from his presence, from Robbie, her long absent son, her only child? All the time she went quickly about, putting out the shining silver, freshly burnished, as it was Saturday; the fresh linen, put ready for Sunday; the best plates, part of the dinner-service that was kept in the dining-room. “This will do for the cold things,” she said; “and oh, make haste, make haste with the rest!” Then she took out the two decanters of wine, the port and the sherry, which nobody drank, but which she had always been accustomed to keep ready. The bread was new, just come in from the baker’s, everything fresh, the provisions of the Saturday market, and of that instinct which prepares the best of everything for Sunday—the Sabbath—the Lord’s day. It was not the fatted calf, but at least it was the best fare that ever came into the house, the Sunday fare.

Then she went back to him in the other room: he had not followed her, but sat just as she had left him, his head on his breast. He roused up and gave a startled look round as she came in, as if there might be some horrible danger in that peaceful place. “Your supper is ready,” she said, her voice still tremulous. “Come to your supper. It is nothing but cold meat to begin with, but the chicken will soon be ready, Robbie: there’s nothing here to fear——”

“I know,” he said, rising slowly: “but if you had been like me, in places where there was everything to fear, it would be long before you got out of the way of it. How can I tell that there might not be somebody watching outside that window, which you keep without shutter or curtain, in this lonely little house, where any man might break in?”

He gave another suspicious glance at the window as he followed her out of the room. “Tell Janet to put up the shutters,” he said.

Then he sat down and occupied himself with his meal, eating ravenously, like a man who had not seen food for days. When the chicken came he tore it asunder (tearing the poor old lady’s heart a little, in addition to all deeper wounds, by the irreverent rending of the food, on which, she had also remarked, he asked no blessing), and ate the half of it without stopping. His mother sat by and looked on. Many a time had she sat by rejoicing, and seen Robbie, as she had fondly said, “devour” his supper, with happy laugh and jest, and questions and answers, the boy fresh from his amusements, or perhaps, though more rarely, his work—with so much to tell her, so much to say,—she beaming upon him, proud to see how heartily he ate, rejoicing in his young vigour and strength. Now he ate in silence, like a wild animal, as if it might be his last meal; while she sat by, the shadow of her head upon the wall behind her showing the tremor which she hoped she had overcome, trying to say something now and then, not knowing what to say. He had looked up after his first onslaught upon the food, and glanced round the table. “Have you no beer?” he said. Mrs Ogilvy jumped up nervously. “There is the table-beer we have for Andrew,” she said. “You will have whisky, at least. I must have something to drink with my dinner,” he answered, morosely. Mrs Ogilvy knew many uses for whisky, but to drink it, not after, but with dinner, was not one that occurred to her. She brought out the old-fashioned silver case eagerly from the sideboard, and sought among the shelves where the crystal was for the proper sized glass. But he poured it out into the tumbler, to her horror, dashing the fiery liquid about and filling it up with water. “I suppose,” he said again, looking round him with a sort of angry contempt, “there’s no soda-water here?”

“We can get everything on Monday, whatever you like, my—my dear,” she said, in her faltering voice.

Afterwards she was glad to leave him, to go up-stairs and help Janet, whose steps she heard overhead in the room so long unused—his room, where she had always arranged everything herself, and spent many an hour thinking of her boy, among all the old treasures of his childhood and youth. It was a room next to her own—a little larger—“for a lad has need of room, with his big steps and his long legs,” she had many a time said. She found Janet hesitating between two sets of sheets brought out from Mrs Ogilvy’s abundant store of napery, one fine, and one not so fine. “It’s a grand day his coming hame,” Janet said. “Ye’ll mind, mem, a ring on his finger and shoes on his feet: it’s true that shoon are first necessaries, but no the ring on his finger.”

“Take these things away,” said Mrs Ogilvy, with an indignation that was more or less a relief to her, pushing away the linen, which slid in its shining whiteness to the floor, as if to display its intrinsic excellence though thus despised. She went to the press and brought out the best she had, her mother’s spinning in the days when mothers began to think of their daughter’s “plenishing” for her wedding as soon as she was born. She brought it back in her arms and placed it on the bed. “He shall have nothing but the best,” she said, spreading forth the snowy linen with her own hands. Oh! how often she had thought of doing that, going over it, spreading the bed for Robbie, with her heart dancing in her bosom! It did not dance now, but lay as if dead, but for the pain of its deadly wounds.

“And, Janet,” she said, “how it is to be done I know not, but Andrew must hurry to the town to get provisions for to-morrow. It will be too late to-night, and who will open to him, or who will sell to him on the Sabbath morning, is more than I can tell; but we must just trust——”

“Mem,” said Janet, “I have sent him already up Esk to Johnny Small’s to get some trout that he catched this afternoon, but couldna dispose o’ them so late. And likewise to Mrs Loanhead at the Knowe farm, to get a couple of chickens and as many eggs as he could lay his hands on. You’ll not be surprised if ye hear the poor things cackling. We’ll just thraw their necks the morn. I maun say again, as I have aye said, that for a house like this to have nae resources of its ain, no a chicken for a sudden occasion without flying to the neebors, is just a very puir kind of thing.”

“And what would become of my flowers, with your hens and their families about?”

“Flooers!” said Janet, contemptuously: and her mistress had not spirit to continue the discussion.

“And now,” she said, “that all’s ready, I must go down and see after my son.”

“Eh, mem, but you’re a proud woman this night to say thae words again! and him grown sic a grand buirdly man!”

The poor lady smiled—she could do no more—in her old servant’s face, and went down-stairs to the dining-room, which she found to her astonishment full of smoke, and those fumes of whisky which so often fill a woman’s heart with sickness and dismay, even when there is no need for such emotion. Robert Ogilvy sat with his chair pushed back from the table, a pipe in his mouth, and a tumbler of whisky-and-water at his hand. The whisky and the food had perhaps given him a less hang-dog look, but the former had not in the least affected him otherwise, nor probably had he taken enough to do so. But the anguish of the sight was not less at the first glance to his mother, so long unaccustomed to the habits of even the soberest men. She said nothing, and tried even to disguise the trouble in her expression, heart-wrung with a cumulation of experiences, each adding something to those that had gone before.

“Your room is ready, Robbie, my dear. You will be wearied with this long day—and the excitement,” she said, with a faint sob, “of coming home.”

“I do not call that excitement,” he said: “a man that knows what excitement is has other ways of reckoning——”

“But still,” she said, with a little gasp accepting this repulse, “it would be something out of the common. And you will have been travelling all day. How far have you come to-day, my dear?”

“Don’t put me through my catechism all at once,” he said, with a hasty wrinkle of anger in his forehead. “I’ll tell you all that another time. I’m very tired, at least, whether I’ve come a short way or a long.”

“I have put your bed all ready for you—Robbie.” She seemed to say his name with a little reluctance: his bonnie name! which had cost her so keen a pang to think of as stained or soiled. Was it the same feeling that arrested it on her lips now?

“Am I bothering you, mother, staying here a little quiet with my pipe? for I’ll go, if that is what you want.”

She had coughed a little, much against her will, unaccustomed to the smoke. “Bothering me!” she cried: “is it likely that anything should bother me to-night, and my son come back?”

He looked at her, and for the first time seemed to remark her countenance strained with a wistful attempt at satisfaction, on the background of her despair.

“I am afraid,” he said, shaking his head, “there is not much more pleasure in it to you than to me.”

“There would be joy and blessing in it, Robbie,” she cried, forcing herself to utterance, “if it was a pleasure to you.”

“That’s past praying for,” he replied, almost roughly, and then turned to knock out his pipe upon the edge of the trim summer fireplace, all so daintily arranged for the warm season when fires were not wanted. Her eyes followed his movements painfully in spite of herself, seeing everything which she would have preferred not to see. And then he rose, putting the pipe still not extinguished in his pocket. “If it’s to be like this, mother,” he said, “the best thing for me will be to go to bed. I’m tired enough, heaven knows; but the pipe’s my best friend, and it was soothing me. Now I’ll go to bed——”

“Is it me that am driving you, Robbie? I’ll go ben to the parlour. I will leave you here. I will do anything that pleases you——”

“No,” he said, with a sullen expression closing over his face, “I’ll go to bed.” He was going without another word, leaving her standing transfixed in the middle of the room—but, after a glance at her, came back. “You’ll be going to church in the morning,” he said. “I’ll take what we used to call a long lie, and you need not trouble yourself about me. I’m a different man from what you knew, but—it’s not my wish to trouble you, mother, more than I can help.”

“Oh, Robbie, trouble me!” she cried: “oh, my boy! would I not cut myself in little bits to please you? would I not—— I only desire you to be comfortable, my dear—my dear!”

“You’ll make them shut up all these staring open windows if you want me to be comfortable,” he said. “I can’t bear a window where any d——d fellow might jump in. Well, then, good-night.”

She took his hand in both hers. She reached up to him on tiptoe, with her face smiling, yet convulsed with trouble and pain. “God bless you, Robbie! God bless you! and bless your homecoming, and make it happier for you and me than it seems,” she said, with a sob, almost breaking down. He stooped down reluctantly his cheek towards her, and permitted her kiss rather than received it. Oh, she remembered now! he had done that when he was angered, when he was blamed, in the old days. He had not been, as she persuaded herself, all love and kindness even then.

But she would not allow herself to stop and think. Though she had herself slept securely for years, in the quiet of her age and peacefulness, with little heed to doors and windows, she bolted and barred them all now with her own hands. “Mr Robert wishes it,” she said, explaining to Janet, who came in in much surprise at the sound. “He has come out of a wild country full of strange chancy folk—and wild beasts too, in the great forests,” she added by an after-thought. “He likes to see that all’s shut up when we’re so near the level of the earth.”

“I’m very glad that’s his opinion,” said Janet, “for it’s mine; no for wild beasts, the Lord preserve us! but tramps, that’s worse. But Andrew’s not back yet, and he will be awfu’ surprised to see all the lights out.”

“Andrew must just keep his surprise to himself,” said the mistress in her decided tones, “for what my son wishes, whatever it may be, that is what I will do.”

“’Deed, mem, and I was aye weel aware o’ that,” Janet said.

CHAPTER VI.

The next day was such a Sunday as had never been passed in the Hewan before. Mrs Ogilvy did not go to church: consequently Sandy was not taken out of the stable, nor was there any of the usual cheerful bustle of the Sunday morning, the little commotion of the best gown, the best bonnet, the lace veil taken out of their drawers among the lavender. Nobody but Mrs Ogilvy continued to wear a lace veil: but her old, softly tinted countenance in the half mask of a piece of net caught upon the nose, as was once the fashion, or on the chin, as is the fashion now, would have been an impossible thing. Her long veil hung softly from her bonnet behind it or above it. It could cover her face when there was need; but there never was any reason why she should cover her face. Her faithful servants admired her very much in her Sunday attire. Janet, though she was so hot a churchwoman, was not much of a churchgoer. Somebody, she said, had to stay at home to look after the house and the dinner, even when it was a cold dinner: and to see the mistress sit down without even a hot potatie, was more than she could consent to: so except on great occasions she remained at home, and Andrew put a mark in his Bible at the text, and told her as much as he could remember of the discourse. It was a “ploy” for Janet to come out to the door into the still and genial sunshine on Sunday morning, and see the little pony-carriage come round, all its polished surfaces shining, and Sandy tossing his head till every bit of the silver on his harness twinkled in the sun, and Andrew, all in his best, bringing him up with a little dash at the door. And then Mrs Ogilvy would come out, not unconscious and not displeased that the old servants were watching for her, and that the sight of her modest finery was a “ploy” to Janet, who had so few ploys. She would pin a rose on her breast when it was the time of roses, and take a pair of grey gloves out of her drawer, to give them pleasure, with a tender feeling that made the little vanity sweet. The grey gloves were, indeed, her only little adornment, breaking the monotony of the black which she always wore; but Janet loved the lustre of the best black silk, and to stroke it with her hand as she arranged it in the carriage, loath to cover up its sheen with the wrapper which was necessary to protect it from the dust. Nothing of all this occurred on the dull morning of this strange Sabbath, which, as if in sympathy, was grey and cheerless—the sky without colour, the landscape without sunshine. Mrs Ogilvy came out to the door to speak to Andrew as he ploughed across the gravel with discontented looks—for to walk in to the kirk did not please the factotum, who generally drove. She called him to her, standing on the doorstep drawing her white shawl round her as if she had taken a chill. “Andrew,” she said, “I know you are not a gossip; but it’s a great event my son coming home. I would have you say little about it to-day, for it would bring a crowd of visitors, and perhaps some even on the Sabbath: and Mr Robert is tired, and not caring to see visitors. He must just have a day or two to rest before everybody knows.”

“I’m no a man,” said Andrew, a little sullen, “for clashes and clavers: you had better, mem, say a word to the wife.” Andrew was conscious that in his prowl for victuals the night before he had spread the news of Ogilvy’s return,—“and nae mair comfort to his mother nor ever, or I am sair mistaen”—far and wide.

“Whatever you do,” Mrs Ogilvy said, a little subdued by Andrew’s looks, “do not say anything to the minister’s man.”

She went back, and sat down in her usual place between the window and the fireplace. The room was full of flowers, gathered fresh for Sunday; and the Bible lay on the little table, the knitting and the newspapers being carefully cleared away. She took the book and opened it, or rather it opened of itself, at those chapters in St John’s Gospel which are the dearest to the sorrowful. She opened it, but she did not read it. She had no need. She knew every word by heart, as no one could do by any mere effort of memory: but only by many, many readings, long penetration of the soul by that stream of consolation. It did her a little good to have the book open by her side: but she did not need it—and, indeed, the sacred words were mingled unconsciously by many a broken prayer and musing of her own. She had gone to her son’s room, to the door, many times since she parted with him the night before; but had heard no sound, and, hovering there on the threshold, had been afraid to go in, as she so longed to do. What mother would not, after so long an absence, steal in to say again good-night—to see that all was comfortable, plenty of covering on the bed, not too much, just what he wanted; or again, in the morning, to see how he had slept, to recognise his dear face by the morning light, to say God bless him, and God bless him the first morning as the first night of his return? But Mrs Ogilvy was afraid. She went and stood outside the door, trembling, but she had not the courage to go in. She felt that it might anger him—that it might annoy him—that he would not like it. He had been a long time away. He had grown a man almost middle-aged, with none of the habits or even recollections of a boy. He would not like her to go near him—to touch him. With a profound humility of which she was not conscious, she explained to herself that this was after all “very natural.” A man within sight of forty (she counted his age to a day—he was thirty-seven) had forgotten, being long parted from them, the ways of a mother. He had maybe, she said to herself with a shudder, known—other kinds of women. She had no right to be pained by it—to make a grievance of it. Oh no, no grievance: it was “very natural.” If she went into the parlour, where she always sat in the morning, she would hear him when he began to move: for that room was over this. Meantime, what could she do better than to read her chapter, and say her prayers, and bless him—and try “to keep her heart”?

Many, many times had she gone over the same thoughts that flitted about her mind now and interrupted the current of her prayers, and of the reading which was only remembering. There was Job, whom she had thought of so often, whose habit was, when his sons and daughters were in all their grandeur before anything happened to them, to offer sacrifices for them, if, perhaps, in the carelessness of their youth, they might have done something amiss. How she had longed to do that! and then had reminded herself that there were no more sacrifices, that there had been One for all, and that all she had to do was but to put God in mind, to keep Him always in mind: that there was her son yonder somewhere out in His world, and maybe forgetting what his duty was. To put God in mind!—as if He did not remember best of all, thinking on them most when they were lost, watching the night when even a mother slumbers and sleeps, and never, never losing sight of them that were His sons before they were mine! What could she say then, what could she do, a poor small thing of a woman, of as little account as a fly in the big world of God? Just sit there with her heart bleeding, and say between the lines, “In my Father’s house are many mansions”—and, “If a man love me, my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him:” nothing but “my Robbie, my Robbie!” with anguish and faith contending. This was all mixed up among the verses now, those verses that were balm, the keen sharpness of this dear name.

She was not, however, permitted to remain with these thoughts alone. Janet came softly to the door, half opening it, asking, “May I come in?” “Oh, who can prevent you from coming in?” her mistress said, in the sudden impatience of a preoccupied mind, and then softly, “Come in, Janet,” in penitence more sudden still. Janet came in, and, closing the door behind her, stood as if she had something of the gravest importance to say. “What is it, woman, what is it?” Mrs Ogilvy cried in alarm.

“I was thinking,” said Janet, “Mr Robert brought nae luggage with him when he came last night.”

“No—he was walking—how could he bring luggage?” cried Mrs Ogilvy, picking up that excuse, as it were, from the roadside, for she had not thought of it till this minute.

“That is just what I am saying,” said Janet: “no a clean shirt, nor a suit of clothes to change, and this the Sabbath-day——!”

“There are his old things in the drawer,” said Mrs Ogilvy.

“His auld things!—that wouldna peep upon him, the man he is now. He was shapin’ for a fine figger of a man when he went away: but no braid and buirdly as he is now.”

Janet spoke in a tone of genuine admiration and triumph, which was balm to her mistress’s heart. His bigness, his looseness of frame, had indeed been one of the little things that had vexed her among so many others. “Not like my Robbie,” she had breathed to herself, thinking of the slim and graceful boy. But it gave her great heart to see how different Janet’s opinion was. It was she who was always over-anxious. No doubt most folk would be of Janet’s mind.

“I was thinking,” said Janet, “to take him a shirt of my man’s, just his best. It has not been on Andrew’s back for many a day. ’Deed, I just gave it a wash, and plenty of stairch, as the gentlemen like, and ironed it out this morning. The better day the better deed.”

“On the Sabbath morning!” said Mrs Ogilvy, half laughing, half crying.

“I’ll take the wyte o’t,” said Janet. “But I can do nae mair. I canna offer him a suit of Andrew’s: in the first place, his best suit, he has it on: and I wouldna demean Mr Robert to a common man’s working claes; and then besides——”

“If you’ll get those he’s wearing, Janet, and brush them well, that’ll do fine. And then we must have no visitors to-day. I know not who would come from the town on the Sabbath-day, except maybe Miss Susie. Miss Susie is not like anybody else; but oh, I would not like her to see him so ill put on! Yet you can never tell, with that ill habit the Edinburgh folk have of coming out to Eskholm on the Sunday afternoon, and then thinking they may just daunder in to the Hewan and get a cup of tea. The time when you want them least is just the time they are like to come.”

“We’ll just steek the doors and let them chap till they’re wearied,” said Janet, promptly. “They’ll think ye’ve gane away like other folk, for change of air.”

“I’m loth to do that—when folk have come so far, and tired with their walk. Do you think, Janet, you could have the tea ready, and just say I have—stepped out to see a neighbour, or that I’m away at the manse, or——? I would be out in the garden out of sight, so it would be no lee to say I was out of the house.”

“If it’s the lee you’re thinking of, mem—I’m no caring that,” and Janet snapped her fingers, “for the lee.”

Neither mistress nor maid called it a lie, which was a much more serious business. The Scottish tongue is full of those nuances, which in other languages we find so admirable.

“Oh, Janet!” cried Mrs Ogilvy again, between laughing and crying, “I fear I’ll have but an ill character to give you—washing out a shirt on Sunday and caring nothing for a lee!”

“If we can just get Andrew aff to his kirk in the afternoon. I’ll no have him at my lug for ever wi’ his sermons. Lord, if I hadna kent better how to fend for him than he did himsel’, would he ever have been a man o’ weight, as they say he is, in that Auld Licht meetin’ o’ his, and speaking ill o’ a’ the ither folk? Just you leave it to me. Bless us a’! sae lang as the dear laddie is comfortable, what’s a’ the rest to you and me?”

“Oh, Janet, my woman!” said the mistress, holding out her hand. It was so small and delicate that Janet was seized with a compunction after she had squeezed it in her own hard but faithful one, which felt like an iron framework in comparison. “I doubt I’ve hurt her,” she said to herself; “but I was just carried away.”

And Mrs Ogilvy was restored to her musing and her prayers, which presently were interrupted again by sounds in the room overhead—Janet’s step going in, which shook and thrilled the flooring, and the sound of voices. The mother sat and listened, and heard his voice speaking to Janet, the masculine tone instantly discernible in a woman’s house, speaking cheerfully, with after a while a laugh. His tone to her had been very different. It had been full of involuntary self-defence, a sort of defiance, as if he felt that at any moment something might be demanded of him, excuse or explanation—or else blame and reproach poured forth upon him. The mother’s heart swelled a little, and yet she smiled. Oh, it was very natural! He could even joke and laugh with the faithful servant-woman, who could call him to no account, whom he had known all his life. If there was any passing cloud in Mrs Ogilvy’s mind it passed away on the instant, and the only bitterness was that wistful one, with a smile of wonder accompanying it, “That he could think I would demand an account—me!”

He came down-stairs later, half amused with himself, in the high collar of Andrew’s gala shirt, and with a smile on his face. “I’m very ridiculous, I suppose,” he said, walking to the glass above the mantelpiece; “but I did not want to vex the woman, and clean things are pleasant.”

“Is your luggage—coming, Robbie?” she ventured to say, while he stood before the glass trying to fold over or modify as best he could the spikes of the white linen which stood round his face.

“How much luggage do you think a man would be likely to have,” he said impatiently, standing with his back towards her, “who came from New York as a stowaway in a sailing-ship?”

She had not the least idea what a stowaway was, but concluded it to be some poor, very poor post, with which comfort was incompatible. “My dear,” she said, “you will have to go into Edinburgh and get a new outfit. There are grand shops in Edinburgh. You can get things—I mean men’s things—just as well, they tell me, as in London.”

She spoke in a half-apologetic tone, as if he had been in the habit of getting his clothes from London, and might object to a less fashionable place—for indeed the poor lady was much confused, believing rather that her son had lived extravagantly and lavishly than that he had been put to all the shifts of poverty.

“I’ve had little luggage this many a day,” he said,—“a set of flannels when I could get them for the summer, and for winter anything that was warm enough. I’ve not been in the way of sending to Poole for my clothes.” He laughed, but it was not the simple laugh that had sounded from the room above. “What did I ever know about London, or anything but the commonest life?”