sation beside
the pretty cottage door, they were eager to know who of all the old
friends she was talking to. Willie was the first to clamber up the mossy
bank and reach the cottage. The others were following, when he joined
them with an expression of mingled interest and disappointment on his
face.

"I say Walter--Grace,--can you guess who mamma is speaking to? Well,
it's Geordie's sister,--little Jean."

Then they all crept shyly near their mother while she talked at the
cottage door, glancing with interest at the inmate. But when little
Grace could find an opportunity she whispered in a tone of
disappointment, "Oh, mamma, is it really true what Willie says?" and
then she added with a sigh, when Willie's news had been confirmed, "Oh,
I'm so sorry; I do wish she could have stayed a little girl."

Her mother smiled at the childish idea; but she presently remembered
that it was as the little herd-boy Geordie's image still lived in her
memory, though nearly twenty summers had come and gone since he entered
on that life in which earthly days and years are merged into eternity,
where the old and feeble renew their strength, and the young grow wiser
than the wisest hero.

Grace's boys and girls had all to be introduced by name to the smiling
little matron, whose eye rested on them more or less appreciatively, as
she recognised a likeness to their mother or their Uncle Walter.

Presently Grace turned to the little group, and said softly, "Children,
would you like to come to the knolls of heather on the other side of the
hill? I am going there now."

"Oh yes, mamma, I want to go," chimed an eager though subdued chorus of
voices; and then the childish feet followed the two mothers as they
wandered slowly through the birch trees and crossed the path which led
to the stepping-stones. The water still splashed and gurgled noisily
round them, and the knolls of heather stretched with unchanged contour
on the other side. Beyond rose the white gables and thatched roof of the
old farm of Gowrie; but the former master and mistress were gone now;
and the young farmer, who had taken the lease, chafed considerably that
he had not been able to include the bit of heathery pasture lands in the
fields, seeing it had been previously secured by another tenant. It was
the only piece of land owned by Grace in the valley, and through all
these years of absence she had jealously guarded any encroachment upon
her territory. Old Gowrie had, at h