“Ye dinna ken onything very wise then,” said the dethroned monarch of the kitchen; “it’s a bonnie-like thing that the laird, honest man, maun wait for his dinner, aboon a’ the rest o’ his troubles! I heard him travelling up and down in his ain study-room in the tower, after thae weary letters came in. What gars folk write when they’ve naething but ill-tidings to tell about, I wad like to ken? and syne out to the Waterside as he aye does when he’s troubled--I canna bide, as I was saying, to see him fashed, for--” “Oh, Mrs Mense!” exclaimed Hope, bounding in, “be sure and tell Mossgray that he is not to call the pony anything till I come back again. Mamma, come and see it; it’s like as if its coat was all sprinkled with snow--I think I will call it Spunkie; but that’s not a bonnie name. Mind, Mrs Mense, that nobody is to give it its name but me.” Mrs Mense promised, and after some further lamentation about her master’s supposed trouble, resumed so keenly the dinner controversy with Janet, that her visitors withdrew. It was yet too early to visit Helen Buchanan, so Hope, expatiating on the beauty of the pony, returned with her mother, home. CHAPTER III. Oh, youth! for years so many and sweet ’Tis known that thou and I were one; I’ll think it but a fond deceit-- It cannot be that thou art gone; Thy vesper-bell hath not yet tolled, And thou wert aye a masquer bold; What strange disguise hast now put on To make believe that thou art gone? I see these locks in silvery slips, This drooping gait, this altered size; But spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, And tears take sunshine from thine eyes! Life is but thought; so think I will That youth and I are housemates still.--COLERIDGE. The Laird of Mossgray stood alone beneath a high beech, whose silvery trunk and delicate buds made it the most noticeable of all the neighbouring trees. His figure was tall, thin, and stooping; his hair the most delicate silvery gray; his face full of thoughtful fortitude and wisdom in its gentlest guise; but his usual serenity was ruffled to-day, the calm of his meditative age was broken. Those dim lands of memory in whose gentle twilight he did so much love to wander, among the fairy shadows, tender and pensive, of things which once were stern and hard enough, had been suddenly illuminated by a flash of the intense and present reality which once they had. The old man’s quietness had suddenly been rent asunder, and floated away from him like a mist, while the stormy blood of his more vehement days was swelling in his veins again.