It is childish--wrong. You have made us
anxious--distressed us. Poor old Bridget has stumbled further in search
of you, this squally night, than she has ventured on the sunniest
morning for many a year."

He was excited, aggrieved; he upbraided her. He had sympathy for old
Bridget's infirmities; he knew nothing of his wife's misery.

Leslie resisted him as she had done since that day, slipped from his
clasp, strove to steady herself, and to walk alone in her weakness.
Bridget put her feeble arm around her.

"Lean on me, madam, and I will lean on you, for I am frail, and the road
is rough, and the wind is blowing fresh, besides the darkness." "I knew
that would quiet her," she muttered. "Poor old Bridget indeed! said
Master Hector. Poor colleen! misled, misguided. Cruel makes cruel. St.
Patrick could not save himself from the hard necessity."

Hector Garret was content since he saw Leslie safe; he accused her of
captiousness and nervousness, but it was the waywardness and perversity
of illness. He had tried her simple nature with too much alienation from
her kind; she had grown morbid on the baneful diet, tutored though she
had been to self-dependence. He had been to blame; but her merry temper
would come back, and the rose to her cheek, and the spring to her foot,
with other ties, other occupations--dearer, more sufficient.

V.--THE MOTHER AND CHILD.

"How is the poor child, Bridget Kennedy? Does she fare as she should
do?"

"The child is as fine a child, Master Hector, as if she had been a boy,
and a Garret, on both sides of the house, and will thrive if her mother
will let her. There are mothers that would hinder their bairns in the
death-rattle, and there are others that so watch their little ones that
the angels of God are displaced from their cradles; and the weary human
care haunts and harasses the infant, and stops its growth."

"I am not learned in these matters, Bridget. You brought me up; I trust
you to rear my children."

"None shall rear them but their mother, Master Hector; none shall come
between her and them. I have ruled long at Otter, but I dare not dispute
with her there."

"Settle it as you like. I did not mean them--I was not thinking of them
at all. I asked for their mother. You have experience. Is she
well--happy as she should be?"

"I wish you would not provoke such mistakes, Master Hector," said
Bridget, pettishly; "I wish you would find some other name for your
wife. You should k