the same that comes from mists that swirl in
gorges of the hills or haunt old ancient woods. The sigh of the wind
seemed to be for his peculiar ear. The nod of the saugh leaf on the
banks was a salutation. There is, in a flutter of the tree's young
plumage, some hint of communication whose secret we lose as we age, and
the boy, among it, felt the warmth of companionship. But the sights were
for the errant moments of his mind; his thoughts, most of the way, were
on his message.

He was a boy with a timid and wondering eye, a type to be seen often in
those parts, and his hair blew from under his bonnet, a toss of white
and gold, as it blew below the helms of the old sea-rovers. He was from
Ladyfield, hastening as I say with great news though common news enough
of its kind--the news that the goodwife of Ladyfield was dead.

If this were a tale of the imagination, and my task was not a work of
history but to pleasure common people about a hearth, who ever love the
familiar emotions in their heroes, I would credit my hero with grief.
For here was his last friend gone, here was he orphaned for ever. The
door of Ladyfield, where he was born and where he had slept without an
absent night since first his cry rose there, a coronach in the ears of
his dying mother, would be shut against him; the stranger would bar the
gates at evening, the sheep upon the hills would have another keel-mark
than the old one on their fleecy sides. Surely the sobs that sometimes
rose up in his throat were the utter surrender of sorrow; were the tears
that mingled with the rain-drops on his cheek not griefs most bitter
essence? For indeed he had loved the old shrunk woman, wrinkled and
brown like a nut, with a love that our race makes no parade of, but
feels to the very core.

But in truth, as he went sobbing in his loneliness down the river-side,
a regard for the manner of his message busied him more than the matter
of it. It was not every Friday a boy had a task so momentous had the
chance to come upon households with intelligence so unsettling. They
would be sitting about the table, perhaps, or spinning by the fire, the
good-wife of Ladyfield still for them a living, breathing body, home
among her herds, and he would come in among them and in a word bring her
to their notice in all death's great monopoly. It was a duty to be done
with care if he would avail himself of the whole value of so rare a
chance. A mere clod would be for entering with a w