h fruits
and flowers as flourish in the north.

Yes, in summer the place might have been called a pretty place; but
under low, leaden skies, when the reaches of sodden grass-land and
rain-bleached stubble had to relieve their grey dreariness only a newly
ploughed brown ridge, or the long turnip fields, green still under the
rain and sleet of the last November days, even the hills were not
beautiful, and the place itself had a look of unspeakable dreariness.

On such a day the Reverend Robert Hume was leading his horse down the
slope which looks on the town from the south, and though his eyes had
the faculty of seeing something cheerful even in dismal things, he
acknowledged that, to eyes looking on it for the first time, the place
might seem a little dreary.

It did not look dreary to him, as he came into one of the two long
streets which, crossing each other at right angles, made the town.
Though he bowed his high head to meet the bitter wind, and plashed
through the muddy pools which the rain had left in the hollows here and
there, he was glad at heart to see the place, and to be at home; and he
smiled to himself as he came in sight of the corner, beyond which lay
the house which held his treasures.

All the town seemed like home to him. As he went slowly on, he had a
thought to give to many dwellers on the street. Was "auld Maggie's"
thatch holding out the wet? And surely there was danger that the water
of that pool might find its way in beneath "Cripple Sandy's" door.
There were friendly faces regarding him from some of the narrow windows,
and "welcome hame," came to him from more than one open door. The town
pump was by no means a beautiful object in itself, but his eye rested
with great satisfaction upon it. It stood on the square where the
houses fell back a little, at the place where the two streets crossed,
and it could be seen from the furthest end of either of them. It had
not long stood there, and as it caught his eye, the pleasant thought
came freshly to him, how the comfort and cleanliness of the homes might
be helped, and how much the labour of busy housewives must be lightened
by it.

But it was no Nethermuir woman who so deftly plied the heavy handle, and
lifted her full buckets as if they had been empty, and who walked before
him down the street with a step which made him think of the heather
hills and the days of his youth. There was no woman of that height in
Nethermuir, nor one who carr