as far as the gate over which Graeme
Elliott leaned, gazing dreamily upon the scene before her.

She was thinking how very lovely it was, and how very dear it had become
to her. Seen through "the smoky light," the purple hills beyond the
water seemed not so far-away as usual. The glistening spire of the
church on the hill, and the gleaming grave-stones, seemed strangely
near. It looked but a step over to the village, whose white houses were
quite visible among the leafless trees, and many farm-houses, which one
could never see in summer for the green leaves, were peeping out
everywhere from between the hills.

"There is no place like Merleville," Graeme thinks in her heart. It is
home to them all now. There were few but pleasant associations
connected with the hills, and groves, and homesteads over which she was
gazing. It came very vividly to her mind, as she stood there looking
down, how she had stood with the bairns that first Sabbath morning on
the steps of the old meeting-house; and she strove to recall her feeling
of shyness and wonder at all that she saw, and smiled to think how the
faces turned to them so curiously that day were become familiar now, and
some of them very dear. Yes; Merleville was home to Graeme. Not that
she had forgotten the old home beyond the sea. But the thought of it
came with no painful longing. Even the memory of her mother brought now
regret, indeed, and sorrow, but none of the loneliness and misery of the
first days of loss, for the last few years had been very happy years to
them all.

And yet, as Graeme stood gazing over to the hills and the village, a
troubled, vexed look came over her face, and, with a gesture of
impatience, she turned away from it all and walked up and down among the
withered leaves outside the gate with an impatient tread. Something
troubled her with an angry trouble that she could not forget; and though
she laughed a little, too, as she muttered to herself, it was not a
pleasant laugh, and the vexed look soon came back again, indeed, it
never went away.

"It is quite absurd," she murmured, as she came within the gate, and
then turned and leaned over it. "I won't believe it; and yet--oh, dear!
what shall we ever do if it happens?"

"It's kind o' pleasant here, ain't it?" said a voice behind her. Graeme
started more violently than there was any occasion for. It was only Mr
Snow who had been in the study with her father for the last hour, and
who