How the poor seem to thrive and bloom and flourish into ripe and hearty old age in those houses with their turf and stone walls! vying in health and gaiety with the lusty house leek that ridges the roof thatch! Can it be that they are made of another clay from those who walk on planked floors, and shiver at every draught that sifts through an ill-adjusted casement? Mary was no hothouse plant: her health was good, and she had always spent much of her time out of doors, careless of weather; but the clammy dampness and closeness of the little cottage rooms oppressed her, and she now drank in the pure clear air of the hills with thirsty content. The swiftly passing waters beneath the bridge, were a darker brown after the rain, and spotted with patches of white foam, and they sung with a low continuous movement as they slid over the rocks and broke on the piers of the arch. Down the stream on a grassy flat the village women were spreading out their little heaps of wet linen fresh wrung from the stream, to bleach in the sun. Farther on a few cattle had come down to drink; and beyond that, cottage roofs and palings closed in the view. In the village street the grey shadows of the cottages alone broke the monotony of the deserted road, till as she looked a figure issued from the door of the inn, and slowly came towards her. The distance was too great to enable her to identify the person; yet some vague association, indefinite but altogether pleasant, was called up by the gait and set of the shoulders as he approached, and added a new chord of feeling which filled up the harmony of the peaceful scene. The breeze flitting through a neighbouring wood came laden with a spicier fragrance of resinous pine, and the hum of vagrant bees mixed with the melody of babbling waters, and all the music of all the sunny mornings she had ever known came back on her with a mysterious gladness as she watched the approaching stranger. He was coming nearer, however, and she turned her head till he would pass. The gentleman came forward smoking an early cigar, and likewise enjoying the quiet beauty of the morning. The view looking up the glen was wilder than in other directions. About a mile above the village the woods ended, and the shoulders of the hills swept down into the ascending valley in breadths of green pasture and brown and purple moor, while the jagged outline of the more distant hills, bounded in the background a broad bank of grey which stood sharply out against the transparent horizon. The steep ascent of the old-fashioned bridge, and its brown stone parapet, picked out in all the sunlit greens and yellows of moss and wall rue, made a bold foreground to the picture, and the sable-clad figure of Mary Brown on the summit, gave life and purpose to the whole. The gentleman ascended the bridge. Mary's back seemed not unfamiliar to him, but it was only on casting a side-long glance in passing that a recognition became possible. 'Mary Brown!'