as if it had been a shrine.

After they had gazed long and silently, and their mother went to fasten
the window again, she said, "Children, we will come here and read God's
Word on Sunday afternoons, as the little company you know about used to
do long ago; and I hope you will all listen to the Good Shepherd's
voice, and follow it as Geordie did;" and presently the children trooped
quietly away along the dark vaulted passages.

There was no faithful Margery now to be trusted with everything, and
able to put things straight in the twinkling of an eye, as her young
mistress used to declare she alone was capable of doing, so Mrs. Foster
had some unpacking and arranging preliminaries to superintend before she
could join her eager little party out of doors. But when tea was over,
and the sun had begun to scatter its orange and crimson tints over the
Kirklands valley, Grace thought she would like to take a stroll among
some familiar places before the darkness came.

After lingering on the old terrace for a little, she gathered her boys
and girls round her, and said she was going to take them across the
park. She wanted to visit a place she remembered well, a pleasant angle
of a rising glade of birches, where she once stood mourning over the
traces of an uprooted cottage. But Grace knew that another home had
grown on the ruins of the former dwelling, and to it she bent her steps
now, for there was one of its inmates whom she longed to see. There was
something of the mingled feeling of interest and romance with which her
children wore viewing these now yet familiar scenes, in Grace's desire
to look on a face she had not seen for many years. Its image would rise
before her, chubby, smiling, and childlike, as of old; and then she
remembered the evening when she had first seen it tear-stained and sad,
as she crossed this path with the little fat hand in hers, as her own
Grace's was now.

But Joan had not shed many tears since then. There was no happier home
in all the valley than the white cottage, over which the birch-trees
lovingly stretched their delicate fringes, her husband, the village
carrier, used to think when he came within sight of it, after his day's
journey was over, his parcels all delivered, and his horses "suppered"
for the night. Generally his bright-looking wife was hovering near the
door, waiting his coming with a little group round her as merry as the
one that was now making the woods of Kirklands ring with