After this long journey, to step out into the bright daylight of a March morning--cold, but sunshiny; and into the unfamiliar clean little streets of an English country-town, gave the most curious sensation to the travellers. Marjory stepped out of the carriage like one in a dream. The long sleepless night, the fatigue of the journey, the ache of anxiety in her mind, seemed to wrap a kind of painful mist about her, through which she saw vaguely the circumstances of the arrival, the unknown figures moving about; the strange houses--some still shuttered and closed up as for the night, while the cheerful stir of early morning had begun with others. Was it possible that all these unknown people had slept softly and soundly all that long night through; and knew of nothing to pluck away their rest from them, or pull their life asunder? The simplest things startled this little weary group as they hurried along the quiet sunshiny street. A cheerful red and white maid-of-all-work opening the windows, looking out with fresh vacant face upon them as they passed, looked as if she must have something to tell them. And so did the milkman clashing with his pails; and the early errandboy stopping in the midst of his whistle to contemplate the two tall old men--Mr. Heriot, with that strangely blanched hue struggling through his brownness--Mr. Charles long and thin, and shaky with fatigue. “A clean little place; a clean little place!” the latter was saying encouragingly to Marjory, as if there was some faint consolation to be drawn from that fact. It was very unlike Comlie. Some of the houses were old, with peaked gables and lattice windows, but the line of flat brick buildings, such as the Scottish mind regards with disdain, with the cleanest of curtains and shutters, and tidy ugly orderliness, filled up the greater part of the street. The inn to which they were bound had a projecting sign, upon which the sun shone--a white horse, which swung, and pranced, and creaked in the morning air, over the low deep gateway by which the house was approached. The travellers were met by a little blear-eyed ostler, who peered at them anxiously from under the shelter of his hand. “For Mr. ’Eriot?” he said, putting up his disengaged hand to his forehead, by way of salutation. “How is he?” cried Marjory, a sudden sickness coming over her; the sickness of suspense which is never so tremendous as when it is about to be satisfied. The little ostler shrugged his shoulders, and shook his ragged, shaggy head.