comfort her by weeping with her; but she
never had courage to broach the subject. The wanderer's name had never
been mentioned between them; and Lilias had something like a feeling of
guilt upon her in hearing, as she could not but hear, the midnight
mourning of the stricken mother.

"And to think that this trouble has been upon her for so many years!"
she thought to herself, one night, as she lay listening to her aunt's
sighs and murmured prayers. "It must be ten years at least; for I have
no recollection of my cousin Hugh. And she has carried about this great
grief all that time alone, and has sought comfort from no one. Oh, if I
could but comfort her!" for Lilias did not know that there are some
sorrows to which sympathy adds only bitterness.

Summer brought another pleasure to them all. Their Sabbath journeys
over the hills to the kirk of Dunmoor were renewed; and, sitting in her
father's seat, and listening to the words of salvation from the lips of
her father's friend, Lilias grew more and more into the knowledge of
"the peace of God that passeth all understanding." Although but a child
in years, early sorrow had taught her some lessons that childhood seldom
learns. The heaviest of their sorrows did not press--upon them now.
There was not the poverty, the ceaseless toil, the constant and
sometimes vain struggle for bread. She could speak of her father and
mother calmly now, and Archie was strong and well again. And so the
look of patience which her face had worn when her aunt first saw it
lying on Archie's pillow in the dim attic room, was changing into a look
of quiet content. Yet she was still unlike other children in many
respects, though the difference was rather to be felt than seen.

Good James Muir did not speak to her as he did to the manse children or
to Archie, but wisely and gravely, as he might have spoken to her aunt.
Annie Graham, though a full year the elder, much to her own surprise,
and to the surprise of all who knew her self-reliance, found herself
deferring to the opinions of Lilias Elder. Not but that she enjoyed, as
much as any of them, the simple pleasures that were within their reach;
even little Jessie's never-absent laughter was not more full of
heartfelt mirth than hers.

But as they came to know Lilias better, they all felt that there was
"something beyond." Even little Jessie said "she was like one that was
standing on a sure place, and was not afraid;" and so she was.