d, "No, my dear, we shall not trouble Elsie to-night; but I shall
take you with me to see her in her own home to-morrow, if you wish it. I
shall be going there."

The cold, grey light was beginning to steal over the woods of Kirklands,
and the rosy tints that still hovered about the knolls would soon give
place to the gloom of night, so Grace gathered her little party, and
turned her steps towards the river.

The merry voices, hushed for a time, began again to resound through the
still evening air, and the children went hurrying on with Jean, who had
told them she must be going home to see after the milking of her cows,
and cordially responded to their wish to join her at the process.

So Grace had been following slowly, and when she crossed the
stepping-stones, she looked lingeringly back, for, with the sound of the
rippling water had come the remembered echoes of Geordie's voice as she
heard it first. Then she called to mind the chilly spring day when she
had started on the search, pronounced so hopeless by old Adam the
gardener, and how gleefully she hailed the unexpected appearance of the
little herd-boy. She smiled as she remembered the childish eagerness
that made her fear that he would not appear at Kirklands, as he had
promised, and his rather reproachful reply that he "Aye keepit his
trysts." And then there rose mingled memories of those trysts, which be
had so faithfully kept in the little still-room, of her own childish
incapacity for the work she had so longed to do, and of the sense of
failure that hung over it so long.

And as she turned to follow her merry boys, who were clambering up the
mossy bank, where the silvery bark of the old birch-trees were still
streaked with rosy sunset hues, she felt how much she had learnt from
the tender, earnest heart of Geordie.

"And comforted, she praised the grace
Which him had led to be,
An early seeker of that Face
Which he should early see."

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Geordie's Tryst, by Mrs. Milne Rae

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