affect Lady Eskside--Violet’s little handkerchief to wit, very wet, rather dirty, and full of wild flowers. “They have been playing here,” said the more composed mother. “_She_ has been here,” cried the old lady; “but oh, my boy! my boy!” “I see something among the trees yonder,” cried Mrs Pringle, running on. Lady Eskside was over sixty, but she ran too, lighter of foot than her younger companion, and inspired with fears impossible to the other. The sun had set by this time, but the light had not waned--it had only changed its character, as the light of a long summer evening in Scotland changes, magically, into a something which is not day, but as clear as day, sweeter and paler--a visionary light in which spirits might walk abroad, and all sweet visions become possible. Hurrying through this tender, pale illumination of the woodland world about them, the two ladies came suddenly upon a scene which neither of them, I think, ever forgot. It was like a tender travesty, half touching, half comic, of some maturer tale. Between two great trees lay a little glade of the softest mossy grass, with all kinds of brown velvet touches of colour breaking its soft green; vast beech-boughs, stretching over it like a canopy, and a gleam of the river just visible. Over the foreground were scattered the remains of a meal, the central point of which--the dish which had once been a pie--caught Mrs Pringle’s rueful gaze at once. A mass of half-faded flowers, a few late primroses, mixed with the pretty though scentless blue violet which grows along with them, lay dropped about in all directions, having been, it appeared, crazily propped up as an ornament to the rustic dinner-table. Against the further tree were the little runaways--Violet huddled up in her blue cloak, with nothing of her visible but her little head slightly thrown back, leaning half on the tree, half on her companion, who, supporting himself against the trunk, gave her a loyal shoulder to rest upon. The little girl had cried herself to sleep--tears were still upon her long eyelashes, and the little pouting rose-mouth was drawn down at the corners. But Valentine was not sleeping. He was pondering terrible thoughts under his knitted brows. How he was ever to get home--how he was ever to get _her_ home! The boy was chilled and depressed and worn out, and awful anticipations were in his mind. What would happen if they had to stay there all night through the midnight darkness, among the stirrings of the mysterious woods? Val knew what strange sounds the woods make when it is dark, and you are alone in them--and a whole night! His mind was too much confused to hear the soft steps of the two ladies who stood behind the other big beech, looking, without a word, at this pretty scene--Lady Eskside, for her part, too much overpowered by the sudden sense of relief to be able to speak. I am not sure that a momentary regret over her chicken-pie did