them money now and again--though sure it wasn’t much--but it’s like you’ll know, Sir?” A painful colour was on the face of Adam Graeme: “Poor, and in trouble, and ye visited me not.” He felt every word an accusation, and could scarcely answer “No.” “And every month or two--I donna know but what it was every month--Miss went by herself into the town to get letters: and I’ve heard say she’d pay more for them than would have put a bit of something comfortable on their table many a day. They were from some far away part, and they came as regular as Sunday comes: but no one could tell who sent them, for she had ne’er a brother, and her father was dead. The Rector’s lady took a deal of notice of Miss and her mother; not that she is one of that kind herself, for she’s just a good easy creature, that doesn’t trouble her head about learning; but she came from Scotland herself you know. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say that the old lady had been in such a many places--never biding long in one, I reckon; and you know the old word, Sir, about the rolling stone. Well, they had been in this way more than a year--a good fourteen months it would be, for it was past Midsummer--when the old lady fell ill; and she kept on getting better and worse, better and worse, till a fortnight come next Friday when she died--and a week past on Monday they buried her. At the burial, I know for certain, Miss was like nought but a shadow, and just yesterday the Rector and his lady went off to Scotland and took her with them. I’ve heard Mary at the Rectory say she was gone to be governess to the Rector’s lady’s sisters; but I donna know what’s their name, nor where they live; and please, Sir, that’s all I can tell you.” The talkative landlady recollected other scraps of gossip however, before she suffered so good a listener to escape her. The subdued and quiet life of the mother and daughter--the proud poverty that made no sign--the privations which were guessed at--which perhaps were magnified--the mysterious letters--the little incidental and unconscious touches which revealed through a mist of verbiage something of the second Lilias, in the fresh youth which knew no cares but those of poverty, and in the first paralysis and stupor of her heavy grief. But the other figure--the sad Naomi leaning on the girl’s arm, and sinking, amid hardship and the chill pains of penury, into a stranger’s grave--every new touch did but deepen the sad cold colours of the picture, and this was the lofty Lily of the old man’s dream--the sunny and joyous daughter of Greenshaw.