The old man upstairs in his study was reading one of his philosophical favourites with some restlessness, as a duty. He was slightly ashamed of himself for so much preferring the society of his young charge to that of his old, learned, constant friends. The dust that lay upon his scientific tools, and the unusual order and solemn regularity with which these folio and quarto inhabitants of his shelves were arranged, came upon him like a reproof. His hand rested upon the fanciful records of Bishop Berkeley’s mystic system. Open before him lay the steadier disquisitions of a grave philosopher of Scotland. Upon the same table were some of those strange, wild charts which reveal to us the dreamy sea of German thought. The volumes round bore all on kindred subjects--writings of men who had given consistence to the reveries of the unformed world before their time, and of men who had but skill enough to spin their spider’s thread about the obscure college or unknown scholar’s cell in which they lived and died. Divine philosophy in its strength and its weakness encircled the Laird of Mossgray. But from the high window of the projecting turret the ruddy winter sunshine stole in a line of dazzling light through the large low room. It was a mild day, so mild that the turret window was open, and the low hum of rural sounds ascended from beneath. Adam Graeme leant back in his chair, and looked at the steady line of sunlight, and forgot the philosophies of science. There rose in the gentle soul of the old man philosophies of older date than these, born before ever the restless mind of humanity had investigated its own formation or classified its feelings. “The same sound is in mine ears Which in those days I heard.” Wonderful sights and sounds of nature unchangeable in all their varying--wonderful human heart which twines its memories about them, and growing old, dwells in the past, by aid of the great earth and greater sun! By the fireside stood an old carved chair; the room was so much the hermitage of its owner, that its furniture was very scanty; there was no accommodation for any companionship; but when every other article in the room was piled with books, this solitary chair remained always unencumbered. For years it had stood in the same position, turned towards the fire, its high carved back standing up, a kind of gloomy screen against the light. This day its position had been slightly altered, and the sunshine streaming in, threw its fantastic gilding over the antique carving and faded old embroidery of the unused seat. The old man started slightly as his eye fell upon it, and it was some time before he recollected himself. Lilias had been in the study early this morning, and she it was who had, unconsciously, made this alteration.