now her too; by this means I found you out. I should
scarcely have imagined Sara Derwent the girl for you to choose."

"_He_ chooses, not I. A mother, whose dutiful son has been her sole
stay through life, has no right to interfere with what he deems his
happiness," said Alison, gravely. And, at that moment, the young curate
reappeared, ready for the duties to which he was summoned by the sharp
sound of the "church-going bell."

"I will stay at home with Captain Rothesay," observed Mrs. Gwynne.
Her guest made a courteous disclaimer, which ended in something about
"religious duties."

"Hospitality is a duty too--at least we thought so in the north," she
answered. "And old friendship is ever somewhat of a religion with me.
Therefore I will stay, Harold."

"You are right, mother," said Harold. But he would not that his mother
had seen the smile which curled his lip as he passed along the hall and
through the garden towards the churchyard. There it faded into a look,
dark and yet mournful; which, as it turned from the dust beneath his
feet to the stars overhead, and then back again to the graves, seemed to
ask despairingly, at once of heaven and earth, for the solution of some
inward mystery.

While Harold preached, his mother and Captain Rothesay sat in the
parsonage and talked of their olden days, now faint as a dream. The
rising wind, which, sweeping over the wide champaign, came to moan in
the hill-side trees, seemed to sing the dirge of that long-past life.
Yet the heart of both, even of Angus Rothesay, throbbed to its memory,
as a Scottish heart ever does to that of home and the mountain-land.

Among other long unspoken names came that of Miss Flora Rothesay. "She
is an old woman now--a few years older than I; Harold visits her not
infrequently; and she and I correspond now and then, but we have not met
for many years."

"Yet you have not forgotten her?"

"Do I ever forget?" said Alison, as she turned her face towards him. And
looking thereon, he felt that such a woman never could.

Their conversation, passing down the stream of time, touched on all that
was memorable in the life of both. She mentioned her husband--but merely
the two events, not long distant each from each, of their marriage and
his death.

"Your son is not like yourself--does he resemble Mr. Gwynne?" observed
Rothesay.

"In person, yes, a little; in mind--no! a thousand times no!" Then,
recollecting herself, she added, "It was not likel