And light are your home-going steps, May Marion, upon this quiet road, which breathes out fresh evening odours from all its dewy neighbour fields--not slow, but lingering--arrested by a hundred fanciful delays. Before you is no great range of prospect--the two ash-trees, holding up their united arms, very much as the children of the Brigend, playing under them, hold up _their_ small clasped hands arched over the merry troop who are rushing yonder “through the needle ee”--the hamlet’s meditative houses, standing about the road here and there, in the pleasant vacancy of the slow-falling gloaming--the burn rumbling drowsily under the bridge--the kye coming home along the further way--and farthest off of all, the grave plantation firs, making a dark background for your own pleasant home. The purple shadows are fading into palmer grey upon the hills behind, and the hills themselves you could almost fancy contract their circle, and grasp each other’s hands in closer rank, with a manful tenderness for this still country, child-like and unfearing, which by-and-by will fall asleep at their feet. Your heart scarcely sings in the hush, though you carry it so lightly; its day’s song is over, Menie Laurie--and the quiet heart comes down with a little flutter of sweet thought into the calm of its kindly nest. The light is fading when Menie reaches the Brigend; and by the door of one of the cottages, Nelly Panton, in her close bonnet and humble enveloping shawl, stands beside the stone seat on which an older woman, who holds her head away with pertinacity, has seated herself to rest. “She’ll no take heart, whatever I can do,” says the slow steady voice of Nelly, from which the elastic evening air seems to droop away, throwing it down heavily upon the darkening earth. “I’m sure I couldna say mair, auntie, nor do mair to please her than I aye try, in my quiet way; but morning and night she mourns after Johnnie, making nae mair account of me than if I was a stranger in the house. And what should ail Johnnie?--for I’m sure I dinna ken what would come o’ folk in our condition if we were aye write-writing from ae hand to anither, like them that have naething else to do. If onything was wrang, we would hear fast enough. I’m saying, mother!” “If you would but let me be!” groaned the older woman; “I’m no complaining to you. If I _am_ anxious in my mind, I’m no wanting to publish’t afore a’ the parish. I’m meaning nae offence to you, Marget--but I think this lassie’s tongue will drive me out of my wits.”