Lilias could not lift her eyes just then, for the tears’ sake that were under their lids; but when she could, she looked up in simple confidence into the face of her guardian. She did not speak, and they went slowly on, for some time, in silence. Her mind was in a pleasant, grateful tumult; she thought of the time when he to whose labour Mossgray bade God speed should thank the old man for his generous care of the orphan; and over the fair future she looked forth through the sunny haze of hope--the indefinite golden mist which has in it a charm wanting to the clearer landscape--the magic of the unknown. But as they continued their walk, shy half-sentences fell on the ear of Mossgray--conveying a confidence which he received gladly, though he did not ask it. How the unsettled family, in one of their short sojournings in a great, bustling, commercial town of England, had met this unknown--how he came from an Orcadian island far off in the vexed Northern seas, and in his youthful energy was bound for the golden East--how he did so tenderly regard and honour the mother over whom Lilias still wept tears, because he also had a mother in his solitary home by the sea, and, except this one nearest friend, was alone in the world; but Lilias did not tell Mossgray how her heart throbbed in glad wonder at sight of the ancient portrait, and in sound of the pleasant name in the old house at Murrayshaugh. It was but a fanciful resemblance, and the name was not an unusual one. The pleasure she had in this, she kept as one little secret gladness to herself. It was but a girlish, affectionate fancy; for the son of the far Orcades could have no connection with the old southern family, whose last representatives were wandering on foreign soil, or laid in strange graves. She smiled at herself for setting so great store by the shadowy resemblance of the portrait; it was too small a thing to tell Mossgray. END OF BOOK II. BOOK III. CHANGES. CHAPTER I. The merry ploughboy cheers his team, Wi’ joy the tentie seedsman stalks.--BURNS. “Mossgray,” said Halbert Graeme, as they sat next morning at their cheerful breakfast-table, “I wish you would come out with me to-day, and see these fields at Shortrigg--they are in a very bad state: small, oddly-shaped fields, ‘three neukit,’ as Saunders calls them, with quite a superabundance of hedges. I should like to sweep those encumbrances away, and bring them into better working order. Will you come and see them, Mossgray?” “Halbert, my man,” said Mossgray, smiling, “I am too old to learn--even your training will scarcely make a good farmer of me, I am afraid; and I give you full discretion, you know.” “But, Mossgray,” persisted Halbert, “I am sure you have no concern for those thriftless hedges; and good agriculture--”