[Illustration] THE STORY OF WANDERING WILLIE _BY THE AUTHOR OF_ _'EFFIE'S FRIENDS' and 'JOHN HATHERTON'_ WITH Frontispiece by Sir Noel Paton, R.S.A. 'Here awa', there awa', wandering Willie'--_Scotch song_ _SECOND EDITION_ London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1870 _All rights reserved_ LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET _TO_ _MY MOTHER_ CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction 1 Part I. 13 Part II. 136 Conclusion 290 THE STORY OF WANDERING WILLIE. INTRODUCTION. _Be the day short or never so long, At length it ringeth to even-song._ All day he had come across the moors through the falling snow. Long ago, from some village far beneath him, the church clock had struck four, and the distant strokes had come faintly up to him, muffled by the storm. So he knew that sunset was over. But it made little difference to him on that moorland track, except that the grey mist caught a darker tint,--that the snow-flakes looked dimmer as they fell. The great silence around could not grow deeper, or the road become more desolate and wild. It was not desolate to him, or strange. His feet had trodden it when the purple heather was in bloom for oh! so many, many years, also the snowy mantle it now wore was not strange to him, but familiar and dear as were the silence and the twilight. All the country-side knew Wandering Willie. Men who were growing old remembered that when they were rosy children, he used to go and come among them even as he did now. Mothers, standing at their cottage doors watching their little ones at play, often saw Wandering Willie lay his withered hand upon the golden heads and, smiling, bless them as he passed. Then they thought of the kind smile and the touch that used to be laid upon their own heads years ago, and they recalled the same simple words of blessing. They had been waiting then for life, with its duties and its hopes--sleeping as it were, and dreaming in the golden morning-flush, until the hour struck for work. And to one after another it had come, and they arose. Busy life began for them, but to Wandering Willie no changes seemed to come. He was looking on at life, not sharing it. He had no home he used to say, smiling gravely, as they asked him the question in the warm corner of many a happy fireside. No, he was alone in the world. But when they said 'Poor Willie,' and some kind soft touch was laid pityingly on his hand, from which the pilgrim-staff had just been laid aside, he smiled again and said he was well content.