Notwithstanding the familiarity I have shown between them--Agnes had but lately begun to put the _Master_ before Cosmo’s name, and as often forgot it--the girl, as they went towards the castle, although they were walking in deep dusk, and entirely alone, kept a little behind the boy--not behind his back, but on his left hand in the next rank. No spy most curious could have detected the least love-making between them, and their talk, in the still, dark air, sounded loud all the way as they went. Strange talk it would have been counted by many, and indeed unintelligible, for it ranged over a vast surface, and was the talk of two wise children, wise not above their own years only, but immeasurably above those of the prudent. Riches indubitably favour stupidity; poverty, where the heart is right, favours mental and moral development. They parted at the gate, and Cosmo went to bed. But, although his father allowed him such plentiful liberty, and would fain have the boy feel the night holy as the day--so that no one ever asked where he had been, or at what hour he had come home--a question which, having no watch, he would have found it hard to answer--not an eye was closed in the house until his entering footsteps were heard. The grandmother lay angry at the unheard of liberty her son gave his son; it was neither decent nor in order; it was against all ancient rule of family life; she must speak about it! But she never did speak about it, for she was now in her turn afraid of the son who, without a particle of obstinacy in his composition, yet took what she called his own way. Grizzie kept grumbling to herself that the laddie was sure to come to “mischief;” but the main forms of “mischief” that ruled in her imagination were tramps, precipices, and spates. The laird, for his part, spent most of the time his son’s absence kept him awake, in praying for him--not that he might be the restorer of the family, but that he might be able to accept the will of God as the best thing for family as for individual. If his boy might but reach the spirit-land unsoiled and noble, his prayers were ended. In such experiences, the laird learned to understand how the catholics come to pray to their saints, and the Chinese to their parents and ancestors; for he frequently found himself, more especially as drowsiness began to steal upon his praying soul, seeming to hold council with his wife concerning their boy, and asking her help towards such strength for him as human beings may minister to each other. But Cosmo went up to bed without a suspicion that the air around him was full of such holy messengers heavenward for his sake. He imagined none anxious about him--either with the anxiety of grandmother or of servant-friend or of great-hearted father.