One autumn evening (for the summer was over before Lilias recovered her strength) they went out together to the river-side. He was telling her how it had been his fellow and companion all his days. “There is something human in this running water,” said the old man. “So we go on, Lilias, through our different stages, blind to what is to come next, often unconscious of the pleasant places we travel through; but though we chafe sometimes, and seem to pause and delay, how constantly the stream runs on! I like it for its humanity--for all the light, and all the darkness, and the winds that touch, and the rains that flood it--for its beginning and for its end. It pleases me to give it life and utterance, and think it human like myself.” “You knew it when you were young, Mossgray,” said Lilias, “and it is beside you still.” She still felt this as something strangely gladdening; to dwell in one place a lifetime; to appropriate it all; to have friendships with its hills and its rivers; to feel that it was home. “Yes,” said Mossgray, looking back at his old house as it lay in the shade, from which the slanting light of the western sun had nearly passed away, “yes, it is a happiness--it is a pleasant thread, this river, on which to hang the memories of one’s life; there was no water, Lilias, in your Cumberland glen?” “Only a brook,” was the answer, “and we used to sit and watch it, for its way was too steep to follow--and sometimes--” Ah, that climbing sorrow! how it returned and returned again! “But you have travelled,” said Mossgray, gently leading her from this painful recollection; “you have scarcely gone so far as I have, but you have seen many places:--let me hear of your wanderings, Lilias.” “Have you been far away, Mossgray?” “Very far,” said Mossgray, with a mournful smile, “and my furthest journey was a very sad one; I went to seek a dear friend, and I found him not--that was in India.” “In India!” A flush of sudden light came over the face which turned to him so earnestly. “Yes. Are you interested in that great world, Lilias?” “It must be a very great country indeed,” said Lilias, slowly, “where the principal places are so far apart. Will you tell me where you were, Mossgray?” The old man smiled. “I could have told you long since, had I known you cared for such a subject. I was in Bombay, Lilias, and far into the interior beyond Bombay.” “In Bombay!” There was another flush of interest--the tall slight figure had never looked so life-like, nor the form so animated. “Yes, in Bombay--do you know anything of Bombay, Lilias?” “No, no,” said Lilias, with a sudden blush, “I do not know--but I have heard--we had a friend once who went there.”