'Oh, Sophia, I seem to have loved you ever since I saw you first--as far back as I can recollect--since we were both children; and the love has grown with the years till I believe I could not live if I saw you married to another. That other may be rich, while I am not; but think, Sophia,--he never saw you till the other day--and what can his love be to mine, that has been growing and deepening through so many years? 'Think of it, dearest. Have we not played together as children? sung together as boy and girl? Have we not taken sweet counsel together as christian man and woman? and shall we not walk through life as wife and husband? 'Think of it all, Sophia, and choose with the best wisdom you can command. 'My life will be a lonely journey, if it is not to be shared by you, for you have been to me the symbol of all that is good and holy; but if you find it is not I who can make you happy, at least my prayer shall ever be for a blessing on whatever choice you make. 'Yours utterly,' '(Signed) RODERICK BROWN.' CHAPTER XVIII. _THE DELIVERY OF A LETTER_. It was the next day that Joseph Smiley set out to deliver the minister's letter. His instructions were to give it into the hands of Miss Sangster herself, if possible, or at least to make sure that it went direct to her, and to ask if there was any answer. This was a mission very much to Joseph's taste. Being a man of diplomatic genius, he loved to attain his purposes by a circuitous path, and to go round a corner rather than walk straight up to his object. There was once a minister of the Free Church, of whom a brother divine declared in the bitterness of his soul,--for he had just been circumvented in a cherished scheme,--that he never tied his shoe without having some ulterior motive. If beadles may, without irreverence, be compared with ministers--the very small with the extremely great--Joseph's idiosyncracy was of a like kind. It was well known that Mrs. Sangster's was an all-pervading presence at Auchlippie; the very cat must drink her milk in the appointed time and place, or the mistress would know why; and all comers and goers and their business were bound to come within her ken. The house, the dairy, the poultry-yard, these were her domain, but fortunately they were also its limit. Queen irresponsible in these, her writ would not run in the adjoining stable and farm-yard. The master had settled that long ago. Good-natured and submissive in the house, he tolerated no petticoat influence beyond its limits; and the mistress, after one or two defeats in the attempt to extend her sway, had yielded long ago to the insuperable, and dwelt at peace in her own kingdom.