Halbert and Lilias were going by Mossgray’s favourite walk, up the waterside. The two adopted children of Mossgray were very good friends; so good friends, Mrs Mense thought, that they would quite naturally settle down into the characters of laird and lady, and give Mossgray no further trouble; but altogether irrespective of the broken golden coin which hung from Halbert’s neck, and the solitary labourer in the East who toiled for Lilias, there were other preventives of which Mrs Mense was quite unaware. Lilias was a great deal older, graver, and more experienced than her young squire; though there was not much difference in positive age, but in that development and maturity of the mind which will not be confined to years. Halbert unconsciously looked up to the young Lilias as to his senior, and Lilias used terms of kindly familiarity to Halbert as to an ingenuous, pleasant younger brother. It was the best thing possible for their frank and friendly intercourse, but entirely destructive to the hopes of Mrs Mense. The road along the waterside was a pleasant one, though the trees were bare, and though it ascended and descended steep braes now and then, and there were places here and there, where the path was very nearly a rustic stair, with interwoven roots for steps. The neighbourhood of Fendie is the very stronghold of burns--you meet them running cheerily through the country like hardy cottage children at every turn, and multitudes of those fairy tributaries swell the noble dark-brown water as it sweeps downward to the Firth. Yonder does one pour down foaming, over the rugged bank of broken rock and gathered stones, high over which that daring stripling birch waves its thin branches, half timorous, half exultant; and here another, softly stealing under cover of the long melancholy willows glides noiselessly, a gentle child, into the bosom of the river. Another--and see how this kind alder kneels upon the mimic headland, shadowing the little bay where its coy wavelets linger--and yet another--with its wild headlong rush, defying those great stones, and jostling the roots of the shrinking beech which somehow has fallen here, and grows patiently and resigned, to its full height, a little timid of its impetuous neighbour. But the name of these children of the hills is legion; listen--you would fancy a school had newly “skailed,” so full is the air of their ceaseless singing; and if you dwell among them but a little time you will learn to know their individual voices, and to name them by separate names as you name human children. The water itself is broad and full, “from bank to brae,” and flows down with a strong life in it, pleasant and hopeful to see; that ample, wide stream, instinct with the easy unostentatious force of nature--you can fancy, as it hastens on, that the bold current throbs, like the beating of a strong man’s breast.