her honest wooers avenged themselves afterwards for her disdain. Then the selfish, fiery, proud woman began with firm industry to make a permanent provision for herself; and from that early period until about two years before this time, she had toiled early and late, like the poorest of labouring men. All that might have been generous and lofty--if there ever was such admixture in the ambition and pride of her youth--had evaporated long ago; a tyrant of unbending will in her small dominion--a hard, grasping, pitiless creditor to the miserable tenants who happened to be in her power--an unhappy spirit, clinging to the saddest dross of worldliness, she had become. A sad object--but yet standing, to the mind of Martha Muir--if we may venture so to speak of the working of Him who creates all--in the relation of a study to a great painting--a model to a finished statue. “Good morning to ye, Alexander Muir,” said Miss Jean, “who’s this ye’ve brought in your hand?” “The gentleman is from Edinburgh, Miss Jean,” said Alexander. “He is a friend of Harry’s, and has been kind to him, as most folk are, indeed, who ken the lad.” “I tell ye, Sandy, ye have made a fuil of that boy,” said the old woman harshly; “a wasterful spendthrift lad that would throw away every bawbee that he had, and mair, that he hasna; but he needna look to sorn on me if ever he comes to want. I have nae mair than I can do wi’ mysel: and where’s my twenty shillings, guid white monie, that I gied to fit him out?” “He will pay it back some day, no fear,” said Alexander, “for I hear from this gentleman that Harry is like to prosper, poor man, and no doubt he will mind his friends, Miss Jean. The gentleman has been speaking to me of your guid sister, John Calder’s wife. He thinks he kens some good friends she had. Did you ever hear what part that family came from?” “Ay, good friends? where are they? what’s like to come o’t?” said Miss Jean, fixing the frosty eyes, whose keen light contrasted so strangely with her ashy wrinkled face, on Cuthbert. “I cannot tell,” said Cuthbert, warily, “it depends entirely upon what relationship I may discover--but it may be good for those who were kind to the Allenders, Miss Calder, if I find that they were relatives of the family I suppose.” “Kind to the Allenders? Do you ken, lad, that it was _my_ mother took them in, when their father died, and the poor things hadna a mortal to look after them?--kind to the Allenders, said he?--weel, weel--puir bairns, they’re baith gane.” Something human crossed the sharp pinched selfish face--even in this degraded spirit, there was a memory of the fragrant far away youth. “And Mr. Charteris,” said Alexander Muir, “would like to ken where they came from, Miss Jean--it is weel kent how good ye were to the orphans--I am meaning your mother--and no doubt you ken better about them than indifferent folk;--that was the way I troubled you, and brought Mr. Charteris this length.” “Wha’s Mr. Charteris?”