The tears came into the mother’s eyes. Menie had not always been her only bairn; and visions of a bold brother, two years older than her little girl, and natural protector and champion of Menie, flashed up before her in the bright air of this home room, where ten years ago her first-born paled and sickened to his early death. “I wouldna gang--no a fit,” exclaimed Jenny, breaking into a little passion of anger and tears. “Wha’s trusting in Providence now--wha’s leaving the ane out of the question that has a’ in His hands--and making plans like as if He didna remain when we were a’ away? I didna think there had been sae little mense--I couldna have believed there was sae little grace in a house like this--and I wouldna gang a fit--no me--as if I thought Providence was owre puir an inheritance for the bairn!” And Jenny hurried away to her kitchen, to expend both tears and anger; but Jenny’s opposition to the London “flitting,” in spite of her indignant protest, died from that hour. CHAPTER V. The sun is dipping low into the burning sea far away, which Criffel’s envious shoulder hides from us; and the last sheaf of rays, like a handful of golden arrows, strikes down into the plain, grazing this same strong shoulder with ineffectual fire as they pass. Touches as of rosy fingers are on all the clouds, and here and there one hangs upon the sky in an ecstacy, suspended not upon the common air, but on some special atmosphere of light. The long attendant shadows have faded from the trees, the roadside pools have lost their brilliant glimmer, and a wakeful whispering hush about the hedgerows and old hawthorns stir all those curious budded watchers, to hear the slow lounging steps of rustic labourers on the road, and wait for the delicate gleam out of the east which shall herald the new-risen moon.