Elizabeth Murray was very busy about her poultry all the height of the summer. She had so many broods of chickens to look after that she scarcely knew how to turn. With all her ordinary work to do, these extra cares filled up her time so that the day was not long enough for its occupations. Dick was very helpful and handy, and they laboured together without grudging, with that unfailing and unvarying industry which those exercise who know that all the fruit of their labours will be their own. No other man or woman drudges with such patience as the little landholders, who have no master over them, and nobody to share their gains; and in many cases no other class live so sordid and miserable a life. Elizabeth and her boy laboured day and night, and never found it too much. She went to the market Saturday after Saturday, and worked all the week through among the chickens and the cows. It never occurred to her even to think that she was getting near the end of that platform of middle age on which most of the more serious work of life is done, or that by-and-by rest might be a necessity; nor did she think her life so hard, as many a poor worker, not doing half so much, has done. She was busy in the poultry-yard in the evening of one of those long summer days, which her eldest son, though she did not know it, was spending so near. At that season there are always chickens in a delicate state of health to be looked after. Two were lying already in a warm basket close to the fire, which was warm enough to singe their down off--and the hospital was likely to be larger before night. The sky was all ablaze with the sunset, if she had ever thought of the sunset. Sometimes, indeed, she would raise her head, and look round her for a moment, seeing all the glories that filled the silent sky and air, but taking no special notice, except to say to herself that this splendid weather was going to last. "Good for the chickens and a' living things," Elizabeth said to herself. But she heard her boy's step coming sturdily up the hill (for Dick had been absent since the morning) long before he was in sight. This was of more interest to her than all the sunsets; and yet, when she paused and looked down for him, what a sight was spread before her! all coolness and greenness and shadow above, the light fading out, the colour departing from the green turf and tiny fields, from everything except the beck with its chain of little pools, which reflected heaven in all its glory. Overhead the rosy clouds were hanging still, brilliant with every tint that reflection can give; while spread out before her lay a wonderful panorama--the broken ground of the braes, close at hand, for a foreground, and beyond them, between the openings of the hills, whose great shoulders shut in the view on either side--far beyond them, yet claiming the attention by its blaze of radiance--the water, far away shining like a sheet of gold in the sun.