"Very well; put me into the carriage." Malcolm placed him, helpless as an infant, in a corner of the silken-padded coach, fitted with cushions especially suited for his comfort. There he sat, in his black velvet coat and point-lace collar, with silk stockings and dainty shoes upon the poor little feet that never had walked, and never would walk, in this world. The one bit of him that could be looked at without pain was his face, inherited from his beautiful mother. It was wan, pale, and much older than his years, but it was a sweet face--a lovely face; so patient, thoughtful-- nay, strange to say, content. You could not look at it without a certain sense of peace, as if God, in taking away so much had given something--which not many people have--something which was the divine answer to the minister's prayer over the two-days-old child-- "Thy will be done." "Are you comfortable, my lord?" "Quite, thank you, Mr. Menteith. Stop--where are you going, Malcolm?" "Just to the kirk, and I'll be there as soon as your lordship." "Very well," said the little earl, and watched with wistful eyes the tall Highlander striding across brushwood and heather, leaping dikes and clearing fences--the very embodiment of active vigorous youth. Wistful I said the eyes were, and yet they were not sad. Whatever thoughts lay hidden in that boy's mind--he was only ten years old, remember--they were certainly not thoughts of melancholy or despair. "God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," and "the back is fitted to the burden," are phrases so common that we almost smile to repeat them or believe in them, and yet they are true. Any one whose enjoyments have been narrowed down by long sickness may prove their truth by recollecting how at last even the desire for impossible pleasures passes away. And in this case the deprivation was not sudden; the child had been born thus crippled, and had never been accustomed to any other sort of existence than this. What thoughts, speculations, or regrets might have passed through his mind, or whether he had as yet reflected upon his own condition at all, those about him could not judge. He was always a silent child, and latterly had grown more silent than ever. It was this silence, causing a fear lest the too rapidly developing mind might affect still more injuriously the imperfect and feeble body, which induced his guardian, counseled by Dr. Hamilton, to try a total change of life by sending him home to the shores of Loch Beg. One thing certainly Mr. Cardross need not have dreaded--the child was no idiot. An intelligence, precocious to an almost painful extent, was visible in that poor little face, which seemed thirstingly to take in every thing, and to let nothing escape its observation.