And picturesque looked the home of the old soldier and his only daughter Hester, as seen in the August sunshine, at that season when autumn peeps stealthily through the openings made in thicket and hedge, when the sweet may-buds are dead and gone, the feathered grasses are cut down, but the ferns and the ivy yet cover all the rocks of the Esk, and flowering creepers connect the trees; the blue hare-bell still peeped out, and in waste places the ox-eye daisy and the light scarlet poppy were lingering still, for August is a month flushed with the last touches of summer, and though the latter was past and gone, those warm tints which make the Scottish woods so peculiarly lovely in autumn had not yet begun to mellow or temper the varied greenery of the bosky valley of rocks and timber through which the mountain Esk flows to the Firth of Forth. To the eyes of Roland Lindsay, how still and green and cool it all seemed, after the arid sands, the breathless atmosphere, and the scorching heat of Southern Egypt! 'By Jove, there is no place like home!' thought he, and he tossed out of his hammock _Punch_, the _Graphic_, and Clery's 'Minor Tactics,' with which he had been killing time, till his fair cousin joined him; and with his cigar alight, his stalking cap tilted forward over his eyes, his hands behind his head, he swung to and fro in the full enjoyment of lazy indolence. CHAPTER II. HESTER MAULE. Though the life of Hester Maule at Merlwood was a somewhat secluded one, as she had no mother to act as chaperone, it was not one of inaction. Her mornings were generally spent in charitable work among poor people in the nearest village, visiting the old and sick, sometimes in scolding and teaching the young, assisting the minister in many ways with local charities, and often winding up the evening by a brisk game of lawn-tennis with his young folks at the manse, and now and then a ball or a carpet dance at some adjacent house, when late hours never prevented her from being down from her room in the morning, as gay as a mavis or merle, to pour out her father's coffee, cut and air his paper, or attend to his hookah, the use of which the old Anglo-Indian had not yet been able to relinquish. Now the girl had become shy or dry in manner, piqued and silent certainly, to her cousin; for, in mortifying contrast to her silent thoughts, she was pondering over his off-hand speech with which the preceding chapter opens; thus even he found it somewhat difficult to carry on a one-sided conversation with the back of her averted head, however handsome, with its large coil of dark and glossy hair turned to him. Roland liked and more than admired his graceful cousin, and now, perhaps suspecting that his nonchalant manner was scarcely 'the thing' and finding her silent, even frosty in manner, he said: 'Hester, will you listen to me now?' 'That depends upon what you have to say, Roland.' 'I never say anything wrong, so don't be cross, my dear little one.'