A most unnecessary passion; for there was Katie Logan all the time, unpledged and unbetrothed, it is true, but thinking her own thoughts of some one far away, who might possibly break in some day upon those cares of elder-sisterhood, which made her as important as a many-childed mother, even in those grave days of her orphan youth; and there was Huntley in his hut in the bush, not thriving over well, poor fellow, thinking very little of Melmar, but thinking a great deal of that manse parlor, where the sun shone, and Katie darned her children’s stockings--a scene which always would shine, and never could dim out of the young man’s recollection. Poor Madame Roche, with her pretty plan of compensation, and poor Desirée, rebelliously resistant to it, how much trouble they might both have saved themselves, could some kind fairy have shown to them a single peep of Huntley Livingstone’s solitary thoughts. CHAPTER LXIV. Five years had made countless revolutions in human affairs, and changed the order of things in more houses than Melmar, but had not altered the fair face of the country, when, late upon a lovely June evening, two travelers alighted from the coach at the door of the Norlaw Arms. They were not anglers, nor tourists, though they were both bronzed and bearded. The younger of the two looked round him with eager looks of recognition, directing his glances to particular points--a look very different from the stranger’s vague gaze at every thing, which latter was in the eyes of his companion. At the manse, where the white gable was scarcely visible through the thick foliage of the great pear-tree--at the glimmering twilight path through the fields to Norlaw--even deep into the corner of the village street, where bowed Jaacob, with his red cowl pushed up from his bullet head behind, stood, strongly relieved against the glow within, at the smithy door. To all these familiar features of the scene, the new-comer turned repeated and eager glances. There was an individual recognition in every look he gave as he sprang down from the top of the coach, and stood by with a certain friendly, happy impatience and restlessness, not easy to describe, while the luggage was being unpacked from the heavy-laden public conveyance; that was a work of time. Even now, in railway days, it is not so easy a matter to get one’s portmanteau embarked or disembarked at Kirkbride station as one might suppose; and the helpers at the Norlaw Arms were innocent of the stimulus and external pressure of an express train. They made a quantity of bustle, but did their business at their leisure, while this new arrival, whom none of them knew, kept looking at them all with their names upon his lips, and laughter and kindness in his eyes. He had “seen the world,” since he last saw these leisurely proceedings at the Norlaw Arms--he had been on the other side of this big globe since he last stood in the street of Kirkbride; and the young man could