“I’m saying,” said Maxwell Dixon, “that the new books have come noo, for this month, Miss Buchanan. This is the twalt--I got Blackwood and the rest o’ them the day--and the minister’s got Blackwood; but ye may hae your pick o’ the rest.” The rest were not very tempting; edifying serials, cheap travesties of the Copperfields and Pendennises of the time; the adventures of London “gents,” who had not any compensating good quality to make amends for the miserable life which they recorded; vile books with which, because they are cheap, the libraries of country towns infest the minds of the young, and impress the “gent” character upon the young men who patronise them. Helen did not look at the books. It was a clumsy feint of the pawkie Maxwell; he thought she would forgive him the breach of his promise to keep the one especial Blackwood for her, when she heard it was given to the minister. But Helen had no thought of Blackwood, nor even of the minister; he had left her mind as the cloud left it. In her happy tremor she forgot the Reverend Robert. She thought only of this in her hand, this messenger of the true heart which she had so vainly doubted. “Ay,” said the librarian, “that’s a new thing; a gentleman brocht it in here, that’s come frae Edinburgh this morning. I dinna ken what it’s aboot mysel’, but he said it was grand, and something aboot a Fendie man that wrote it. I didna tak particular notice, but--Maggie, didna yon gentleman say that it was a Fendie man that made the new book on the counter?” “Ay, faither,” said the more polite Maggie, Maxwell’s buxom daughter. “He said it was a Fendie young gentleman; but he wadna tell us wha.” “And you do not know?” said Helen, with her wavering blush and smile. “Na,” said the stolid Maxwell, “except it be, maybe, Dr Elliot’s son, that’s at the college learning to be a doctor, or Maister Nicol Shaw, the writer, or the minister, or--I’m sure I dinna ken. It’s no in the library, Miss Buchanan, and it’s no my ain either, or ye micht get a reading o’t, if ye wad promise no’ to cut up the leaves, and to keep it out o’ the gate o’ the bairns; but it’s no’ my ain. I durstna even sell’t if I had a customer.” And Helen durst not buy it, even if it had been Maxwell’s own; but she stood and looked at it with longing eyes. She remembered her own words so well; she remembered the winter night when William in his corner by the fireside announced to her his going to Edinburgh, his entrance on the man’s work, of which so often in her eager, ambitious mind she had dreamed; and he too remembered it. The romance of the old times will never die. She had belted on his spurs and his sword in yonder quiet evening, and now the lady’s colour was on the lance of the true knight!