A sudden change in the weather had whitened the fields of the Castle Farm, and covered the puddles in the narrow lane with thin clear sheets of ice. Little or nothing was said at the breakfast-table; but as Alec Lindsay went into the empty kitchen to fasten a card on his little cow-hide trunk, his sister followed him, and stood over him in silence till one of the men came in, lifted the box, and carried it away. ‘You will write home every week, won’t you, Alec?’ she said. ‘Every week, Maggie! what in the world shall I get to say?’ ‘Tell us what your life is like, whether your lodgings are comfortable, what sort of people you take up with.’ ‘Well; all right.’ ‘And, Alec, you had better write to father and me time about; and when you write to me you can send a little scrap for myself as well.’ ‘That you needn’t show to anybody? I thought that was against your principles, Meg. Don’t mind me, I was only making fun of you,’ he added, suddenly throwing his arms round his sister’s neck; ‘of course I will send you a little private note now and then. Don’t cry, Maggie.’ ‘I’m not crying.’ ‘Yes, you are.’ ‘It will be very lonely without you, Alec, all the long winter.’ ‘I almost wish I weren’t going, for your sake; but I know you have helped me to get away, Maggie, and it was awfully kind of you.’ Here Mr. Lindsay’s voice was heard calling out that the travellers would miss the coach if they did not set off at once. ‘Nonsense! We shall only have to wait at the roadside for twenty minutes,’ said Alec under his breath. But he gave his sister a last hug, shook hands with his father, and mounted the back-seat of the dog-cart, where his trunk and Blake’s portmanteau were already deposited. In another minute they were off; and Alec, looking back, saw the light of the lantern shine on the tall figures of his gray-haired father and his sister, framed in the old stone doorway as in a picture. The stable was passed, the long byre where the cows were already stirring, the stack-yard, the great hay-rick, the black peat-stack flanking the outmost gable; and as each familiar building and well-remembered corner faded in turn from view, Alec in his heart bade them good-bye. He felt as if he would never see the old place again--never, at least, would it be to him what it had been. When he came again it would be merely for a visit, like any other stranger. The subtle, invisible chains that bind us to this or that corner of mother earth, once broken, can hardly be reforged; and Alec felt that no future leave-taking of the Farm would be like this one; henceforth it would belong not to the present, but to the past.