The bright sunshine of the autumn evening was touching, we have said, with fiery light the smooth silver stems of the tall birch-trees, and the birds still sang sweetly under the feather-like foliage that hung gracefully downward, unstirred by the faintest breeze, when, looking from an open window on the scene she loved so well, Mary Wellwood paused in the bitter task of making up a list of their household effects ere she left the roof of Birkwoodbrae for ever. After she was fairly gone, a letter to Dr. Wodrow would inform him of all their wishes, she was thinking, when suddenly Robert stood by her side, and put an arm kindly round her. 'Why, you will kill yourself with all this work and anxiety; dear Mary, let me help you,' said he. 'I am nearly done,' said she, wearily, and with a quivering lip; 'there are but a few relics, books and so forth, I wish to keep----' 'Leave it with me; save you, Mary, and the old folks at the manse, I have no one left to care for now.' 'Poor Robert!' said she, kissing his cheek, for she knew his meaning well. No one can 'minister to a mind diseased' like a mother, it has been said; but Mrs. Wodrow, to her sorrow, had signally failed to so minister to her son Robert. 'And you have failed at the University, Robert?' said Mary, after a pause. 'Utterly!' 'How--and why?' 'I don't know--at the last moment, somehow,' said he, despondently, looking down on the carpet. 'Ellinor, no doubt, was the cause?' said Mary, softly. He smiled bitterly, but made no reply. 'You will try again, Robert dear?' said Mary, patting his hand. 'Never, Mary,' he replied, in a low, husky voice; 'God only knows how I toiled and toiled, at botany, anatomy, and chemistry--Balfour and Quain and Miller, and with _what_ object; but I have taken my last shot, and shall grind no more.' 'And what do you mean to do, Robert?' 'Heaven knows--you will hear in time, Mary.' She eyed him wistfully and sorrowfully, and then said, 'After your quarrel with Ellinor----' 'Don't call it a quarrel, Mary--say coldness. Well?' 'It is very kind of you to take the trouble to come here now.' 'Kind--trouble; why, what has come to you, Mary, that you speak thus, and to _me_? A farewell letter might have done, but I--I preferred to come to the old place once again.' 'Pardon me, Robert, but I am so crushed--so confused--that I scarcely know what I say.' 'But is the step you are about to take absolutely necessary, and in such hot haste too?' 'What step?' asked Mary, as if to delay the bitterness of the admission. 'Leaving Birkwoodbrae! I can't make out the mystery of it at all!' 'Alas! we must go; this house was never ours--we dwelt here on sufferance; and the place is another's now--another whom we know only by name and in family feud.' 'Can it be that God's world belongs only to rascals!' exclaimed young Wodrow, bitterly. 'Well, the rich and cruel seem to thrive best, for a time at least,' said Mary, a little infected by his mood.