“His name was Grant,” said Lilias, “he was not Mr Hew; he was a young man--quite young.” “And what should he be else but young?” said the little old woman, pattering up and down with her short, unequal, agitated steps. “Div ye think he’s withered and auld like me? I tell ye he’s the gallantest lad ye ever set your e’e upon; ye may ca’ that like him, but it’s naething till him--the spark that was in his bonnie e’en, and his brent broo--as if I didna mind! If he was far blythe and lightsomer like than that, and yet had a face that could be wae when need was, for ither folk afore himsel; and if he had a presence o’ his ain that gar’t ye bow, and a smile that made ye fain; then I say it was Mr Hew ye saw, and nae ither living man!” There was some wonderful power in the old woman’s words. The sad pale head of Lilias slowly followed her motions, as if by some magnetic attraction. She did not speak; but as Isabell ceased, she closed her eyelids painfully, perhaps the better to see again the person thus truthfully described--perhaps to shut in the tears. The housekeeper pattered up and down for a while in silence; at length she stopped short immediately before Lilias, and repeated with emphasis,-- “I’m telling ye it was Mr Hew.” “It was not Mr Hew, Isabell,” said Lilias gently, as she rose to go away. “It was one whose home is very far from this; who came from the northern islands far away; and it is a mere fancy of mine that he is like the portrait. He was not Mr Hew.” Isabell was not satisfied--she accompanied her visitor to the door with many mutterings; the “kindly face” could belong only to a Murray, “it bid to be Mr Hew.” Lilias turned away across the unsafe bridge, and went hastily up a steep lane which led to the Fendie high-road; she was not going home, and excited and anxious as she was she could not bear the meditative calm of the Waterside. It was a somewhat long walk, and Lilias was not like herself; her feverish hasty pace, and the painful flushes of colour which now and then crossed her brow, were unnatural. It was the first time she had been tried by this trial--the deadly anxiety with which we shiver and burn, when our sole hope is in peril, and there comes to us no tidings. She thought she could endure to hear of any certain calamity, but that blank of suspense was terrible to her--she could not bear it. There had been mail after mail from the far East, but no letter for Lilias; and this was the day again. She had gone to Murrayshaugh to fill up the feverish blank of those slow moments; to look once more upon the face which never perhaps she should look upon with faith and trust again; and now she was hurrying to the decision of all those tremulous doubts and fears; if there was a letter to-day--and if there was none--