This very season of autumn, which frightened the townsfolk, and sent them home in silence, used to fill our hearts with peace, for it was to us the crown and triumph of the year. We were not dismayed by the leaves that fell with rustling sound in Tochty woods, nor by the bare stubble fields from which the last straw had been raked by thrifty hands, nor by the touch of cold in the northwest wind blowing over Ben Urtach, nor by the greyness of the running water. The long toil of the year had not been in vain, and the harvest had been safely gathered. The clump of sturdy little stacks, carefully thatched and roped, that stood beside each homestead, were the visible fruit of the long year's labour, and the assurance of plenty against winter. Let it snow for a week on end, and let the blast from the mouth of Glen Urtach pile up the white drift high against the outer row of stacks, the horses will be put in the mill-shed, and an inner stack will be forked into the threshing loft, and all day long the mill will go with dull, rumbling sound that can be heard from the road, while within the grain pours into the corn-room, and the clean yellow straw is piled in the barn. Hillocks was not a man given to sentiment, yet even he would wander among the stacks on an October evening, and come into the firelight full of moral reflections. A vague sense of rest and thankfulness pervaded the Glen, as if one had come home from a long journey in safety, bringing his possessions with him. The spirit of October was on the Doctor as he waited for his guests in the drawing-room of the manse. The Doctor had a special affection for the room, and would often sit alone in it for hours in the gloaming. Once Rebecca came in suddenly, and though the light was dim and the Doctor was seated in the shadow by the piano, she was certain that he had been weeping. He would not allow any change to be made in the room, even the shifting of a table, and he was very particular about its good keeping. Twice a year Rebecca polished the old-fashioned rosewood furniture, and so often a man came from Muirtown to tune the piano, which none in the district could play, and which the Doctor kept locked. Two little pencil sketches, signed with a childish hand, Daisy Davidson, the minister always dusted himself, as also a covered picture on the wall, and the half-yearly cleaning of the drawing-room was concluded when he arranged on the backs of two chairs one piece of needlework showing red and white roses, and another whereon was wrought a posy of primroses. The room had a large bay window opening on the lawn, and the Doctor had a trick of going out and in that way, so that he often had ten minutes in its quietness; but no visitor was taken there, except once a year, when the wife of the Doctor's old friend, Lord Kilspindie, drove up to lunch, and the old man escorted her ladyship round the garden and brought her in by the window. On that