Hew Murray put his arm through his friend’s--far through, as he had been used to do, when they dreamed together over the old grand poetic city on the breezy Calton. “Give Lucy your other arm, Adam,” said the familiar genial voice, “and we will tell you all our story.” Lucy with the white hair took Adam’s arm. “Have you never been away?--is it all a dream those thirty years?” cried Adam Graeme. “Look at me again,” said Lucy Murray with a smile. “No--there are things in those thirty years too precious to part with. I think you have not seen my son.” “Your son, Lucy?--is it my Lily’s Hew?” asked Mossgray. “Lucy’s Hew--our representative,” said Hew Murray, “was it not a strange chance, Adam--if we may speak of chances--which brought our boy and I together?” “I am bewildered, overpowered,” said Mossgray. “Do you forget, Hew, that I know nothing?--that this morning I only clung to the hope that you were living at all as to a fantastic dream--that it is thirty years since I gave up the sober expectation of finding you again?--where have you been?--why have you kept us in this suspense? How is it that we have never heard of you, Hew Murray?” Hew Murray grasped his friend’s arm tightly in his own. “Did you ever think the fault was mine, Adam?--but who is this?” The little old woman, the housekeeper of Murrayshaugh, came quickly round the gable of the house. They were standing in front of it--and their voices had startled her. “Who is it?” Lucy Murray looked at her, with some anxiety. “I think it must be Isabell Brown.” Very suspiciously Eesabell returned the scrutiny. The dignified, gentle, aged lady with her serene face and silver hair brought some singular thrill of recognition to the old woman. She thought she had seen the face before. “I thought it was only gangrel folk. If I had kent it was you, Mossgray, I wadna have disturbed you; but maybe the lady and the gentleman wad like to see the hoose.” She looked at them again with a jealous eye; the feeling was instinctive. Isabell did not know why she was suspicious of those friends of Mossgray. “Do you not know me, Isabell?” said the graceful old lady, holding out her hand. Isabell drew back with a slight curtsey. “Na--there’s few ladies ever came about Murrayshaugh in my time; Miss Lucy had mair maids than me--ye’re maybe taking me for my sister.” “There was no one else but Jean, I think, Isabell,” said Lucy, smiling; “and Jean was not like you. She was as tall as I am, and she had red hair. We gave her blue ribbons on Hew’s birthday because they suited her ruddy face--do you mind, Isabell?--and do you not know me now!” Isabell drew further back--the old woman looked scared, suspicious, afraid. “Na, I dinna ken ye, Madam,” she repeated firmly. “I ken few fremd ladies--I haena been in the way o’ them--how should I?” Lucy smiled: it brightened her face in the calm of its peacefulness into warmer and sunnier life. “If you do not know me, Isabell, do you know Hew?”