His old easy chair had been removed from the fireside corner to the window. It was a latticed window, furnished with a broad shelf extending all the length of its deep recess, which seemed to have been made for plants--but no plants interposed themselves between the sun-shine and the books, which were the best beloved companions of the old, gentle, solitary man. Cuthbert looked at them as they lay in little heaps in the corner of the window. There was no dust about them, but almost as little arrangement. They lay, as their contents lay in the head of their good master, mingled in pleasant friendliness. The Fourfold State and the Crook in the Lot embraced the royal sides of Shakspere, and a much-used copy of Burns lay peacefully beside the Milton, which, to tell truth, opened more easily at Comus or at Il Penseroso than in either Paradise. Besides these there were Cowper and Young, an odd volume of the Spectator, an old time-worn copy of the Pilgrim, with Samuel Rutherford’s Letters, and Fleming, the interpreter of prophecy, and the quaint Willison ballasting some volumes of Scott and Galt. Daily friends and comrades were these, bearing marks of long and frequent use, some of them encased in homely covers of green cloth, which the old man’s own careful hands had endued them with; some half bound, after his fashion, with stripes of uncultivated “calf” defending their backs, and their boards gay with marbled paper. It was pleasant to see them, in their disarrangement, upon the broad ledge of the window, friends too intimate and familiar to be kept on ceremonious terms. “Take a seat, Mr. Charteris,” said uncle Sandy; “if you had come while Harry was here it might have been pleasanter for you--for Harry, poor man, is a blithe companion; maybe over blithe sometimes for his own well-doing: And you think the bairns would be better with me?” “Nay,” said Charteris, hastily, “except in so far as this house of yours, Mr. Muir, is certainly a most pleasant contrast to the din and haste of Glasgow, and your nieces, you know, like your young friends yonder, are of kin to spring.” The old man had seated himself in his easy chair, which Cuthbert would not take. He took off his spectacles to wipe them with his handkerchief, and shook his head. “There is Rose, to be sure, and little Lettie; but my niece, Martha, Mr. Charteris--well, I cannot tell--the spring may come to her yet after the summer has passed. I would not put the bondage of common use about Martha, for the like of me is little able to judge the like of her. It is a hard thing to understand. It might have been a question in the days of the auld philosophy--what for the mind that would have served a conqueror should be put into her--a mind that can ill bow to the present yoke--when there is even too much need of such in high places. It will be clear enough some time--but it has aye been a wonder to me.”