“How does your honour know they are so?” asked Ella, for once following the Highland fashion of answering one question by another. “I saw at a glance that they were intelligent, and Ronald told me enough while we were waiting for you to show that you know better how to live with a little than these cousins of yours with much. How did you all learn?” “Did Ronald tell you about Angus?” asked Ella, her eye for the first time sinking under that of the laird. “Merely that Angus taught you the management of a boat, as he had learned it in dangerous places abroad. Angus is a relation, I suppose, or only a friend?” “A friend; and he taught us all many things that are little thought of here. My father ever said we should do well if we had Angus at hand to advise us.” “I suppose he will come and advise you again, Ella, at such an important time as this. Will you not send for him? Can I carry any message to the mainland, for I hear that it was from over the water that he used to come.” Ella answered in a somewhat stern voice, that if ever he came again it must be from over the water, for that he had been in foreign parts for five years, and nothing had been heard of him for long. “Five years! then he could not have taught her brothers much, so young as they must have been when he went away.” Ella replied that he taught her whatever her father could not, and her brothers learned of her. “Perhaps,” said the laird, “if his friends expected to hear of him, something prevented his sending to them.” “No doubt,” replied Ella. “What do you imagine it could be, Ella?” “Perhaps he is dead,” said she quietly, but still looking on the ground. “You do not suppose he has forgotten his old friends? yet, such things do sometimes happen, Ella.” She made no answer; and the laird saw by the deep colour which made itself seen through her weather-worn complexion, that he had gone too far. He was very sorry; and now wondered at his own slowness in perceiving the true state of the case; but there was so little in her appearance to suggest the idea, and she seemed so wholly devoted to her brothers, that he had fancied the connexion with Angus one of pure friendship,—of that friendship which bears in the Highlands a character of warmth, simplicity, and familiarity, not very common in some other places. To relieve Ella, the laird spoke immediately of business, relating what was to be done to make the cottage and field tenantable, and explaining to her that, twenty shillings a year being the interest upon the capital laid out, twenty shillings a year was the sum he would take, if she thought she could pay it.—Ella had no doubt of it.