As the Mistress spoke, a figure strange to Kirkbride stalked through the circle of lookers-on. Nothing like that bearded face and wide cloak had been known to Cosmo’s memory in the village or the district. He turned unconsciously to look after the stranger. Further down on the road before were two girls whom Cosmo recognized with a start; one was Joanna Huntley, the other there was no possibility of mistaking. Cosmo gazed after her wistfully--a blush of recollection, of embarrassment, almost of guilt, suddenly rising to his face. Bowed Jaacob stood at his smithy door, with the fiery glow of the big fire behind him, a swart little demon gazing after her too. Desirée! Was she the desired of this unknown figure in the cloak, who went languidly along to join her? Cosmo stood silent for a moment, altogether absorbed by the junction of old and new thus strangely presented to him. Familiar Kirkbride, with Jaacob at the smithy door, and that graceful little figure of romance, whose story no one but Cosmo knew, followed by the other stranger figure which he was entirely unacquainted with. He started when his mother repeated her imperative summons--the color on his cheeks looked guilty and troubled; he had his secret on his heart, and knew beforehand that it would not be agreeable to the Mistress. So he did the very worst thing he could have done--postponed the telling of it to a more convenient season, and so went uncomfortably, and with a visible restraint, which vexed his mother’s soul within her, home to Norlaw. Patie, as it happened, had come home a few days before on a brief visit; and when they met round the fire that first evening, every one’s thought instinctively was of Huntley. When Marget came in, disturbing the gloamin quietness with lights, her long-drawn sigh and involuntary exclamation:-- “Eh, sirs! if Master Huntley were but here!” startled the little family group into open discussion of the subject which was in all their hearts. “Huntley’s been further than you, Cosmo,” said the Mistress, “and maybe seen mair; but I wouldna wonder if Huntley thinks yet, as he thought when he left Norlaw, that there’s no place equal to hame.” “Huntley’s in the bush; there’s not very much to make him change his opinion there, mother,” said Patrick. “Ay, but Huntley’s heart is ever at hame,” said the Mistress, finding the one who was absent always the dearest. “Mother,” said Cosmo, his courage failing him a little, “I have something to tell you--and it concerns Huntley, too, mother. Mother, I have found the lady, the heir--she whom we have all heard so much about; Patie, _you_ know?”