During that afternoon Susie came again, and was much disappointed and cast down not to see him. Perhaps it was well that Susie’s first sight of him had been at a moment when he could say or do nothing to diminish or spoil her tender recollection. None of those things that vexed the soul of his mother affected Susie. The maturity of the man, so different from the boy; the changed tone; the different way of regarding all around him; the indifference to everything,--all these were hidden from her. The only thing unfavourable she had seen of him was his personal appearance, and that had not struck Susie as unfavourable. The long, soft, brown beard, so abundant and well grown, had been beautiful to her; his size, the large development of manhood, had filled her with a half pride, half respect. Pride! for did not Robbie, her oldest friend, more or less belong to Susie too. She had dreamt already of walking about Eskholm with him, happy and proud in his return, in the falsification of all malicious prophecies to the contrary. He was her oldest friend, her playfellow from her first recollection. There was nothing more wanted to justify Susie’s happy excitement--her satisfaction in his return. “And he is away to Edinburgh, and has never come to see us! That is not like Robbie,” she cried, with a trace of vexation in her eyes. “Susie, I will tell you and no other the secret, if it is a secret still. He had fallen into ill company, as I always feared, in that weary, far America.” “How could he help it?” cried Susie, ready to face the world in his defence, “young as he was, and nobody to guide him.” “That is true; and we that live in a quiet country, and much favoured and defended on every side, we know nothing of the lawlessness that is there. You will read even in the very papers, Susie: they think no more of drawing a pistol than a gentleman here does of taking his stick when he goes out for a walk.” Susie nodded her head in acquiescence, and Mrs Ogilvy went on: “Where that’s the custom, harm will come. Men with pistols in their hands like that, that sometimes go off, even when it’s not intended, as you may also read in the papers every day----. Oh, Susie! it happened that there was an accident. How can we tell at this long distance, and so little as we know their manners and their ways, the rights of it all, and what meaning there was in it, or if there was any meaning! But a shot went off, and a man was killed. I am used to it now,” said Mrs Ogilvy, her lip quivering, her face appealing in every line to the younger woman at her side not--oh! not--to condemn him; “but at the first moment I was as one that had no more life. The stain of blood may be upon my son’s hand.” “No, no!” cried Susie. “No, I will not believe it--not him, of all that are in the world!”