It was not long before I was established in my new situation. Mr. Bray said, roughly,-- "I s'pose new friends is better than them your father picked out for you; leastways you must try 'em and see. I don't say as I wouldn't on no account take you back, if I found you couldn't git along without me. You mustn't have that look of bein' twenty mile away, when a hoss's leg is in your hand, and you're ready to shoe him; for I sha'n't be by to bring you back again." Mrs. Bray said,-- "Well, it is rather a long ride for the grand folks 'way down to Lower Warren, and Amos bein' a family man, of course they wouldn't expect him to be a-movin' to suit them; and as he's had the trainin' of you, they think it'll be all right. I hope it will, I'm sure." Little Annie looked sadder than usual, but said nothing, until the morning when I was to commence work at the new forge; then she followed me to the door with her little straw basket, in which she had packed a nice lunch, covered with lilac-leaves from the bush by the front door. "You said you shouldn't have time to come home to dinner, as you go to Hillside this afternoon, Sandy," she said, apologetically, as she slipped it into my hand. "I hope it will be long before you go away altogether, it would be so lonely without you"; and the tears filled her blue eyes. Why was that gentle, appealing beauty always luring me back to the village life, whose rustic, homely ways I was learning to despise? I could not tell; but she, part and parcel of it though she was, bound to it by parentage and pursuits, had never failed to touch my heart. I stooped and kissed her, as I so often had done before, and answered, laughing,-- "Go away? Never, Annie, until I take you with me." She blushed; the old happiness stole back into her eyes at the first kind word from me, and she returned to her simple, daily tasks; while I, filled with ambition and pride in my new life, soon dismissed her from my mind. I had meant to ask Annie to help me in arranging my new forge, as she had helped me with my first picture; and when the necessary purchases were made and in their places, when the woman living in the other part of the building I occupied had swept my floor and washed my solitary window, which was at one end and looked toward the hill, I resolutely determined to delay the unpacking of a box of pictures and books, of which the latter were to fill a small shelf above, and the former to hang around the window, until I could bring Annie up the next day to assist me. Deciding to read, therefore, until some custom should fall to me, I knocked a narrow board off the top of the box and slipped out a single book, when I heard the tramp of horses' feet, and, going to the door, saw the party from Hillside returning from a horseback ride. Mr. Lang, mounted on his magnificent horse, hurried forward and rode fairly within the smithy.