m the heart, and how that affection and
respect which the warm circle of the hearth usually calls forth had
passed with him to the graves of dead fathers, growing, as it were,
bloodless and ghoul-like amidst the charnels on which they fed.

"Ha, Randal, boy," said Mr. Leslie, looking up lazily, "how d'ye do? Who
could have expected you? My dear--my dear," he cried, in a broken voice,
and as if in helpless dismay, "here's Randal, and he'll be wanting
dinner, or supper, or something." But in the mean while, Randal's sister
Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her brother's neck, and
he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal's strongest human
affection was for this sister.

"You are growing very pretty, Juliet," said he, smoothing back her hair;
"why do yourself such injustice--why not pay more attention to your
appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?"

"I did not expect you, dear Randal; you ways come so suddenly, and catch
us _en dish-a-bill._"

"Dish-a-bill!" echoed Randal, with a groan. "_Dishabille!_--you ought
never to be so caught!"

"No one else does so catch us--nobody else ever comes! Heigho," and the
young lady sighed very heartily.

"Patience, patience; my day is coming, and then yours, my sister,"
replied Randal, with genuine pity, as he gazed upon what a little care
could have trained into so fair a flower, and what now looked so like a
weed.

Here Mrs. Leslie, in a state of intense excitement--having rushed
through the parlor--leaving a fragment of her gown between the yawning
brass of the never mended Brummagem work table--tore across the
hall--whirled out of the door, scattering the chickens to the right and
left, and clutched hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. "La, how you
do shake my nerves," she cried, after giving him a most hearty and
uncomfortable kiss. "And you are hungry, too, and nothing in the house
but cold mutton! Jenny, Jenny, I say Jenny! Juliet, have you seen Jenny!
Where's Jenny? Out with the old man, I'll be bound."

"I am not hungry, mother," said Randal; "I wish for nothing but tea."
Juliet, scrambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the
tea, and also to "tidy herself." She dearly loved her fine brother, but
she was greatly in awe of him.

Randal seated himself on the broken pales. "Take care they don't come
down," said Mr. Leslie with some anxiety.

"Oh, sir, I am very light; nothing comes down with me."

The pigs stared up, and g