How I enjoyed these Pentland rambles, alone in the rain and the soughing winds! Underfoot, the dank, sodden grass and the broken fern; overhead, the sombre sky, the scurrying clouds, and the drifting mist; on every side the grassy mounds of the Dunty Knowes, with their shivering birks tossing to windward, and a rain-soaked hogg beneath every sheltering crag. Alone, yet not alone; for a Presence was with me, guiding me on, showing me through the gathering gloom the sun-bathed crown of Allermuir, bringing to my ear from out the rage of the storm the wail of the curlew, and summoning to my side the plaided shepherd 'Honest John' and his gray, rough-coated collie Swag. Ah, these are memories only! memories only! for Cample Cleugh and Capel Linn are lost to me with my boyhood. No more am I the strong, able-bodied lover of the open, moving with firm, sure step among scenes which a master's touch has made immortal; but a poor, crippled, pain-racked invalid, as parochial in feeling as in outlook, sitting in an easy-chair by an attic fire, watching through a rain-washed window-pane a scene which fills me with forebodings and touches my heart to the very quick. Down there in the courtyard, where the water in the imperfect pavement is lying in muddy pools, Tom Jardine, hatless, coatless, and regardless of the splashing rain, is walking to and fro like a lion in his cage. His face is set and white, his finger-tips clenched in the palm of his hand, and there is an anxious, troubled expression in his eye which recalls memories of unfortunate, harassed clients. For a moment he stands with feet apart and eyes dolefully fixed on the wet, sloppy flagstones. A door quietly opens, a tiny, smiling-faced figure darts through the rain, and in an instant two round, bare, chubby arms are encircling his knee, and a fair, curly head is nestling against his thigh. But there is no fatherly response to the loving embrace, no reply to the childish prattle. With a jerky wrench Tom frees himself from the wee, cuddling arms, and two wide-opened, surprised blue eyes follow him as again, in thoughtful measured tread, he walks up and down and up and down. Then red dimpled knuckles are pressed into these blue eyes, a sob breaks from a wounded little heart, and Tom comes to a sudden halt. In an instant his clouded face is wreathed in smiles and beams with loving solicitude. Bending down, he lifts the sobbing morsel; and as he disappears through the kitchen doorway with the precious burden in his strong arms and his hungry lips pressed against a soft red cheek, I say to myself, with a heavy, welling heart, 'Tom, you surely have your troubles, but as surely you have the antidote.' CHAPTER V.