Esther Fleming, Norman Rutherford's nurse, lived in a cottage by herself, not far from Merkland. When the first Mrs. Ross's first son was born, Esther had entered her service as "bairns'-maid," had left it again to be married, and after a brief period of two years had returned a youthful widow, with one boy infant of her own, between whose birth and Norman's there was but some brief intervals of weeks. Esther had remained the head of Mrs. Ross's nursery through the vicissitudes of all the succeeding years; had received into her charge infant after infant of Mrs. Ross's family, and with grief, less only than the mother's, had seen the tender blossoms fall one by one into the family grave: but Norman was peculiarly her own--a tie especially tender attached the generous, manly boy, to his foster-mother; and when her own handsome sailor-lad, returned from his first voyage, stood up to measure his height with that of his playmate and comrade, Esther's overflowing eye looked with scarce less partial pride upon Norman Rutherford than upon William Fleming. When Mrs. Ross herself died, the little Anne became the object of Esther's devoted and unceasing care, although her removal from Merkland to the cottage she now occupied took place before the second marriage of Mr. Ross; but even after that event, bitterly as the faithful servant resented it, Esther continued, for her delicate nurseling's sake, to hold her footing in Merkland, and to pay daily visits to her old dominion in the nursery, asserting against all comers, and in face of the new darling, Lewis himself, the rights and privileges of "Miss Anne." But when Anne was still a child, a blight fell upon Esther Fleming; the self-same blight, which brought the gray hairs of Norman Rutherford's father in sorrow to the grave. The old nurse, stronger, or more tenacious of life, had borne her sorrow silently, and marked it more by her utter seclusion from the rustic society round her, than by any other demonstration. She had a little niece living with her, to manage her small domestic concerns, and except through this girl and Anne, Esther had no intercourse with the world--the very brief and quiet world--about her. Her house stood on a high bank of the Oran, with a pathway winding before it; and the grassy descent, dark with old trees and bushes, shelving steeply down behind. Within, the little dwelling consisted of two apartments, perfectly clean and neat (as is, indeed, much more usual in our Scottish cottage than southern readers give us credit for,) though without any attempt at ornament, except the two or three small profile portraits of children, which hung over the mantlepiece of the outer room, the only existing memorials of the dead sons and daughters of the house of Merkland, which Esther had rescued from their disgrace, in the lumber-room, after Mr. Ross's death.