And there were blessings on him--blessings which many a desolate heart sighed and pined for in vain--blessings of rare love and tenderness, of children fair and hopeful, and in his own person of a competent mind, and of the bright health and youth to which everything was possible. So far as his starting point was concerned, a wonderful realization had come to Martha’s ambitious hopes for him; and now it almost seemed to lie with Harry himself to decide what the end of them should be. In the farm-house of Allender Mains, Harry’s farm-manager has already established himself, and from the midst of its bare trees you see appearing the half-built chimney of the new threshing-mill, the machinery of which has just arrived under charge of two young engineers from Glasgow; and the slope of the farm-garden, and all the barnyard behind, is lined with great draining-pipes, glancing red through the hoar-frost at a mile or two’s distance, upon their slight elevation. And just behind the little byre and stable of Allenders’ house, a great range of new stables and byres are rising, to receive the cattle, which Harry has resolved shall be unequalled in the country-side. When the weather is “fresh,” you cannot pass a field without seeing the heavy breath of the plough-horses, rising like a mist over the hedge, and hearing the meditative whistle, or uncouth call of the ploughman behind. An air of sudden activity spreads over the little district--so decided and apparent, indeed, that a retired weaver in Stirling has already two new houses in progress, one of which is a little shop, in the very front of Maidlin Cross. The event excited the hamlet to a positive uproar, for never before had any man dreamed of dignifying Maidlin with such a two-storied slated house as slowly grew upon its astonished vision now. And in the dusk of the winter mornings you see the lanes full of hardy brown children, girded with rough sackcloth aprons--bound for school, you would fancy. No, they are bound for Harry’s fields, to “gather stanes,” and have each a little “wage” to carry home on Saturday night to the immense delight of mother and child. The fathers are laying drains and ploughing, the elder sisters tend the fine cows in the byre at Allender Mains, and prosperity to which they are altogether unaccustomed falls suddenly upon the startled inhabitants of Maidlin Cross.