'Murkley Arms.' By this time the world had begun to wake a little. The Sabbath seriousness had relaxed. A few groups were standing about the road in Sunday attire. The women had come out to the doors; the children were playing discreetly, but now and then rising into louder riot, which the nearest bystander rebuked with a "Whisht, bairns! mind it's the Sabbath day." Notwithstanding this apparent severity, there was a good deal of quiet pleasure diffused in the air. The softness of this pause in the working-day tenor of existence pervaded everything, and at the same time the duration of the unusual stillness and sense of monotony it brought, made the good people think with pleasure of the toil to be resumed to-morrow. Adam was standing in an attitude very unusual to him, leaning against his doorpost, when Lewis came up, and Janet, in her best gown, smoothing down a fresh white muslin apron, with many frills and decorations, stood by his side. They were not an uncomely couple. He, though he concealed under the veil of his beard all but his blue-grey eyes and well-formed nose, had a head of great rustic dignity and force surmounting his six feet of somewhat languid length; for Adam had "nae pith," as his wife said, and, but for his great gift at "the fushin'," would have been a somewhat useless personage. She was not, to all appearance, of so elevated a type. Her face was round, and her nose turned up, and she was forty-five. The roundness natural to that mature age had taken all the charm from her trim figure, but still it was trim: a little vibration of activity, as if the machinery was all in such thorough order that the slightest touch would set it in motion, was in her: and Janet's smiling countenance was all alive, ready to hear and see everything, and give forth opinions, as many as might be desired. "It's been another bonnie day," she said. "Ye'll no tell us now, sir, that we've nae fine weather on Tayside." "I hope I never could have been so unmannerly," Lewis said. "Na, you never said it, but I saw it in your eye--folk from the south are a' of that opinion, but it's just lees. I hear there is mair fog and mist in London town in a single winter than will come our way in a dizzen years." "You must be very glad Sunday is over," said Lewis, with a boldness that took away Janet's breath. "Sir!" she cried, scandalised; then after a pause of consideration: "ye're taking your fun out of us. Them that are tired of the Sabbath day, Mr. Murray, how are they to bide Heaven, if they win to it at the hinder end?"