many
years, left her little home in Weircombe and started upon a journey she
had never taken and never had thought of taking--a journey which, to her
unsophisticated mind, seemed fraught with strange possibilities of
difficulty, even of peril. London had loomed upon her horizon through
the medium of the daily newspaper, as a vast over-populated city where
(if she might believe the press) humanity is more selfish than
generous, more cruel than kind,--where bitter poverty and starvation are
seen side by side with criminal extravagance and luxury,--and where,
according to her simple notions, the people were forgetting or had
forgotten God. It was with a certain lingering and wistful backward look
that she left her little cottage embowered among roses, and waved
farewell to Mrs. Twitt, who, standing at the garden gate with Charlie in
her arms, waved hearty response, cheerfully calling out "Good Luck!"
after her, and adding the further assurance--"Ye'll find everything as
well an' straight as ye left it when ye comes 'ome, please God!"

Angus Reay accompanied her in the carrier's cart to Minehead, and there
she caught the express to London. On enquiry, she found there was a
midnight train which would bring her back from the metropolis at about
nine o'clock the next morning, and she resolved to travel home by it.

"You will be so tired!" said Angus, regretfully. "And yet I would rather
you did not stay away a moment longer than you can help!"

"Don't fear!" and she smiled. "You cannot be a bit more anxious for me
to come back than I am to come back myself! Good-bye! It's only for a
day!"

She waved her hand as the train steamed out of the station, and he
watched her sweet face smiling at him to the very last, when the
express, gathering speed, rushed away with her and whirled her into the
far distance. A great depression fell upon his soul,--all the light
seemed gone out of the landscape--all the joy out of his life--and he
realised, as it were suddenly, what her love meant to him.

"It is everything!" he said. "I don't believe I could write a line
without her!--in fact I know I wouldn't have the heart for it! She is so
different to every woman I have ever known,--she seems to make the world
all warm and kind by just smiling her own bonnie smile!"

And starting off to walk part of the way back to Weircombe, he sang
softly under his breath as he went a verse of "Annie Laurie"--

"Like dew on the gowan lyin'