For indeed it was to them as a death to leave Scaurnose. True, Annie came from inland, and was not of the fisher-race, but this part of the coast she had known from childhood, and in this cottage all her married years had been spent, while banishment of the sort involved banishment from every place they knew, for all the neighbourhood was equally under the power of the factor. And poor as their accommodation here was, they had plenty of open air and land room; whereas if they should be compelled to go to any of the larger ports, it would be to circumstances greatly inferior, and a neighbourhood in all probability very undesirable for their children. CHAPTER XXI. MR GRAHAM. When Malcolm at length reached his lodging, he found there a letter from Miss Horn, containing the much desired information as to where the schoolmaster was to be found in the London wilderness. It was now getting rather late, and the dusk of a spring night had begun to gather; but little more than the breadth of the Regent’s Park lay between him and his best friend--his only one in London-- and he set out immediately for Camden Town. The relation between him and his late schoolmaster was indeed of the strongest and closest. Long before Malcolm was born, and ever since, had Alexander Graham loved Malcolm’s mother; but not until within the last few months had he learned that Malcolm was the son of Griselda Campbell. The discovery was to the schoolmaster like the bursting out of a known flower on an unknown plant. He knew then, not why he had loved the boy, for he loved every one of his pupils more or less, but why he had loved him with such a peculiar tone of affection. It was a lovely evening. There had been rain in the afternoon as Malcolm walked home from the Pool, but before the sun set, it had cleared up; and as he went through the park towards the dingy suburb, the first heralds of the returning youth of the year met him from all sides in the guise of odours--not yet those of flowers, but the more ethereal if less sweet, scents of buds and grass, and ever pure earth moistened with the waters of heaven. And to his surprise he found that his sojourn in a great city, although as yet so brief, had already made the open earth with its corn and grass more dear to him and wonderful. But when he left the park, and crossed the Hampstead Road into a dreary region of dwellings crowded and commonplace as the thoughts of a worshipper of Mammon, houses upon houses, here and there shepherded by a tall spire, it was hard to believe that the spring was indeed _coming slowly up this way_. After not a few inquiries, he found himself at a stationer’s shop, a poor little place, and learned that Mr Graham lodged over it, and was then at home.