"Very well," said the little earl, and watched with wistful eyes the
tall Highlander striding across brushwood and heather, leaping dikes and
clearing fences--the very embodiment of active vigorous youth.

Wistful I said the eyes were, and yet they were not sad. Whatever
thoughts lay hidden in that boy's mind--he was only ten years old,
remember--they were certainly not thoughts of melancholy or despair.
"God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," and "the back is fitted to the
burden," are phrases so common that we almost smile to repeat them or
believe in them, and yet they are true. Any one whose enjoyments have
been narrowed down by long sickness may prove their truth by
recollecting how at last even the desire for impossible pleasures passes
away. And in this case the deprivation was not sudden; the child had
been born thus crippled, and had never been accustomed to any other sort
of existence than this. What thoughts, speculations, or regrets might
have passed through his mind, or whether he had as yet reflected upon
his own condition at all, those about him could not judge. He was
always a silent child, and latterly had grown more silent than ever. It
was this silence, causing a fear lest the too rapidly developing mind
might affect still more injuriously the imperfect and feeble body, which
induced his guardian, counseled by Dr. Hamilton, to try a total change
of life by sending him home to the shores of Loch Beg.

One thing certainly Mr. Cardross need not have dreaded--the child was
no idiot. An intelligence, precocious to an almost painful extent, was
visible in that poor little face, which seemed thirstingly to take in
every thing, and to let nothing escape its observation.

The carriage drove slowly through the woods and along the shore of the
loch, Mr. Menteith and Mrs. Campbell sitting opposite to the earl, not
noticing him much--even as a child he was sensitive of being watched
--but making occasional comments on the scenery and other things.

"There is the kirk tower; I mind it weel," said Mrs. Campbell, who still
kept some accent of the clachan, though, like many Highlanders, she had
it more in tone than in pronunciation, and often spoke almost pure
English, which, indeed, she had taken pains to acquire, lest she might
be transferred from her charge for fear of teaching him to speak as a
young nobleman ought not to speak. But at sight of her native place
some touch of the old tongue returne