tures, and how
Will had improved in all respects, and how like his father all the old
people thought him. Even Mrs Snow had more to say than Rose,
especially when he went on to tell about Clayton, and the changes that
had taken place there.

"Will fancied, before he went, that he remembered all the places
distinctly; and was very loth to confess that he had been mistaken. I
suppose, that his imagination had had as much to do with his idea of his
native place, as his memory, and when, at last, we went down the glen
where your mother used to live, and where he distinctly remembered going
to see her with you, not long before you all came away, he acknowledged
as much. He stepped across the burn at the widest part, and then he
told me, laughing, that he had always thought of the burn at that place,
as being about as wide as the Merle river, just below the mill bridge,
however wide that may be. It was quite a shock to him, I assure you.
And then the kirk, and the manse, and all the village, looked old, and
small, and queer, when he came to compare them with the pictures of them
he had kept in his mind, all these years. The garden he remembered, and
the lane beyond it, but I think the only things he found quite as he
expected to find them, were the laburnum trees, in that lane," and on
Charlie went, from one thing to another, drawn on by a question, put now
and then by Graeme, or Mrs Snow, whenever he made a pause.

But all that was said need not be told here. By and by, he rose and
went out, and when he came back, he held an open book on his hand, and
on one of its open pages lay a spray of withered ivy, gathered, he said,
from the kirkyard wall, from a great branch that hung down over the spot
where their mother lay. And when he had laid it down on Graeme's lap,
he turned and went out again.

"I mind the spot well," said Mrs Snow, softly.

"I mind it, too," said Graeme.

Rose did not "mind" it, nor any other spot of her native land, nor the
young mother who had lain so many years beneath the drooping ivy. But
she stooped to touch with her lips, the faded leaves that spoke of her,
and then she laid her cheek down on Graeme's knee, and did not speak a
word, except to say that she had quite forgotten all.

By and by, Mr Snow came in, and something was said about showing
Merleville to their visitor, and so arranging matters that time should
be made to pass pleasantly to him.

"Oh! as to that, he seems no' ill to