Marjory had left her horse and little Milly her tiny pony at John Horsburgh’s inn, and they were now going up and down the silent street in the sunshine about their various businesses, holding up their riding-skirts, the little girl keeping very close by her sister’s side like a little shadow, and communicating with the outer world almost exclusively by means of a large pair of limpid blue eyes, clear as heaven, and wide open, which said almost all that Milly had to say, and learned a great deal more than Milly ever betrayed. Wherever Marjory went, this little shade went with her, sometimes holding by her dress, always treading in her very footsteps, a creature with no independent existence of her own, any more than if she had been part of Marjory’s gown, or an ornament she wore. As for Marjory herself, she went along the street of Comlie with the free yet measured step of a princess, aware that every eye in the place (there were not many visible), was turned to her; but so used to that homage that it gave her only a fine backing of moral strength and support, and made her neither vain nor proud. Vain! why should Marjory Hay-Heriot be vain? She knew her position exactly and accepted it, and was aware of all its duties, and considered it natural. She was like a princess in Comlie; she would have told you so simply without more ado, as calm in the consciousness as any young grand-duchess in her hereditary dominions. She had been going over her kingdom that morning, and had found a great many things to do. At this moment when, if the reader pleases, we shall join ourselves like little Milly to her train, she was coming up from “the shore” as it was called, the fisher-region, where she had been paying a sorrowful visit. One of the boats had gone down in the last gale, a too frequent accident, and a young widow with a three months old baby, a poor young creature who not two years before had left Pitcomlie House to marry her Jamie, was sitting rocking herself and her child in the first stupor of grief, and replying by monosyllables to all the kindly attempts to console her. “Oh ay, Miss Marjory,” “I ken that,” “Yes, Mem, its a’true,” poor Jean had said, with the weary assent which means so little. Marjory came back to the High Street with a grave face, and her own mind full of the dreariness of that inevitable assent. What could any woman answer more to the kind voices that bid her bear her trial and have patience, and remember that it is God’s will? “Its a’ true.” May was not of a melancholy mind; but that pitiful assent to everything she had said went to her heart. She walked on with her light step that did no more than _effleurer_ the ground, stopping sometimes to nod and smile to some woman at her door. “All well to-day, Mary?” “Oh, ay, Miss Marjory, just about our ordinary, nae mair to complain o’ than maist puir folk; if thae weary cauld winds would bide away that gie us a’ our death.”