philosophy that had grown out of her much thinking. Robert was not a bairn, nor was God a mere benevolent patron, to seize the lad without rhyme or reason, and set him back there, because she wearied Him with crying. She had wanted God to be that, many times in her long period of trouble; but by dint of time and thought a different sense of things had come to her. God was not a good fairy: He was the great God of heaven and earth. He had Robert to think of as well as his mother, and thousands and millions of other things. Often in the weariness of her heart she asked nothing for Robert, said nothing, but sat there before the Lord with the boy’s name on her heart put before Him. And that was all she was doing now. Of all that landscape there was one point to which her eyes turned the oftenest, and, which drew her away out of herself, as if by some charm of movement and going. And that was the piece of road which lay at the foot of the brae, with her own garden-gate opening into it, and the two lines of the holly-hedges on either side. Often she would be drawn back from her thinking by the sight of a figure on the road, which turned out to be a very common figure,--sometimes a beggar, or a man with a pack, a travelling merchant, or, more familiar still than that, a postman on his way home, or a lad that had been working later than usual. But whatever the man was, the sight of him always gave Mrs Ogilvy a sharp sensation. “At any moment!” she had said to herself so long that it had entered into her very soul. “At any moment!”--she was conscious of this night and day. Through all that she was doing she had always one ear listening for any new step or sound. And you may think how much more strong that habitual watchfulness was when she looked out in the evening, the time when everybody comes home, upon the road by which he must come, if he ever came. A hundred times and a hundred more she had watched that road, with her eyes “Busy in the distance shaping things That made her heart beat thick.” Often and often she had seen a man detach himself from the white strip of the road, and heard her own gate click and swing, and watched a head moving upward over the line of the hedge. But it never was any one except the most simple, the most naturally to be expected visitor--perhaps the minister, perhaps Mr Miller from the paper-mill, perhaps some friend of Andrew’s and Janet’s. Her heart beat in her ears, in her throat, for a dreadful moment, and then stood still. It was not he: how should it? She rose up with no heart at all, everything stopped and hushed, and said, “How are you to-night, Mr Logan? What a bonnie evening for a walk,” or “How are you, Mr Miller; sit down and take a rest after your climb.” She said nothing about her disappointment; and, indeed, who could say she was disappointed? It just was not Robbie: and she had no more reason to think that it would be him than that the night would suddenly turn into day.