Who was Lost and is Found

of that Sabbath afternoon. Friends arrived from Edinburgh, as Mrs Ogilvy

not resist the delights of the walk in this fine weather, they said, and to breathe the country air in June after having been shut up all the week in Edinburgh was a great temptation. They all came from Edinburgh, these good folks: and there was one who was an elder in the Kirk, and who said that the road had been measured, and it was little more, very little more, than a Sabbath-day’s journey, such as was always permitted. Sometimes there would be none of these visitors for weeks, but naturally there were two parties of them that day. Mrs Ogilvy, out in the garden behind the house, sat trembling among Andrew’s flower-pots in his tool-house, feeling more guilty than words could say, yet giving Janet a certain countenance by remaining out of doors, to justify the statement that the mistress

at we should draw a veil. She had got Andrew off to his kirk, which was all she conditioned for. She could not, she felt sure, have carried through if Andrew had been there, glowering, looking on. But she did

bbath-day’s journeys, and afternoon walks. The train, nae doubt, is a great easement. I ken a sooth face from a lee

k, Janet, that have done nothing

s Bennet said she would rather no go back through the Edinburgh streets with a muckle flower in her hands, as if she had been stravaigin’ about the country. So ye see, mem, they

et assured her, no more to be said. And the lingering evening passed again, oh so slowly—not, as heretofore, in a gentle musing full of prayer, not in the sweet outside air with the peaceful country lying before her, and the open doors always inviting a wanderer back! Not so: Robert was not satisfied till all the windows were closed, warm though the evening was,

tell you. It’s just a whimsey of the mistres

he meaning of thi

t herself in the dim evening. It was perhaps too dim for him to see the expression in her

the use of it? drawing every tramp’s attention to

, that was

ders. “You’d better leave it off now, mother. I d

in his hand. “The mistress,”{101} he said darkly, in a voice that cam

n?” cried Robert, angri

Robert bids you, Andr

ere was in Mrs Ogilvy’s mind a vague, unreasonable reluctance—a failing as if of some visionary hope that it might still have brough

e a lighthouse; you’ve been showing all over the country, so far as I can see. But that’ll not do for me,” he said. “I’ll have to lie low for a long time if I stay here, and no light thrown on m

h, Robbie, do not speak

n’t a brass farthing: nothing but the clothes I’

to Edinburgh in the morning. Will you

u were thinking of was a good little boy to go with his mother, who would see he did not spend too much. No, thank you: I’ll

ook her some time to bring back the usual tone to her voice, and subdue the quick sting of that superficial wound. “I am going very early,” she said; “it will be too early for you. I am going to see Mr Somerville, whom perhaps you will remember, who does all my business. There was

,” he said, in a tone of good-

wever, to see him with the books. It was not reading for the Sabbath-day; but yet Sir Walter could never harm any man: and more still than that—it was not ill men, men with perverted

deed after a while it must be acknowledged that Mrs Ogilvy succumbed to a temptation{104} almost irresistible to a mother, and desired the woman to “give me the bairn,” with a certainty of putting everything right, which something magnetic in the experienced touch, in the soft atmosphere of her, and the fr?lement of her silk, and the sweetness of her face, certainly accomplished. She held the baby on her knee fast asleep during the rest of the short journey, and that little unconscious contact with the helpless who

given her a seat. “You’ve made up your mind, Mrs Ogilvy, to make that d

. I came to ask you, on the contrary, after all w

d as I promised, and I’ve go

not go,”

y quick. I will not speak the common nonsense to you and say that’s what lad

le, upon the quiet office where nobody

at day—oh, how long it is ago I know not—it might be

with a terrifying

danger?” she cried; and then with deliberate gravity she repeated, “Y

now that there is any danger. It might be the wisest thing

,{106} and no safeguards against the famine that might arise in that land—and indeed brought down fo

beats me. There’s another paper with more particulars: maybe he was well advised. It’s a far cry to Lochow

ring and fading under her old friend’s eye, as

s of America—sheriffs they seem to call them—riding the country with a wild posse, and a revolver in every man’s hand—bless me, very unlike our sheriff

they are looking for, my Robbi

ly and with emphasis, “we must be very merciful. A young lad gets mixed in with a set of these fellows—he has no thought what it’s going to lead to—then by the time he knows he’s so in with them, he has a false notion that his honou

er hand, her eyes dim with tears. He took

siness tones, “I would neither hide him nor put him forward, Mrs Ogilvy, if I were you. I would keep him at

ut some man—some man that might come after him: but he will not explain. I said, Was it a

ou to run in that lonely house. I always said the Hewan was a bonnie little place, and I could understand your fancy for it, but very lonely, very lonely, Mrs Ogilvy. Lor

son Robbie in it, a strong man, bless him!—and Andrew the gardener—and ple

p money in

payments, nothing to speak of—unless when Willi

strange person. A man might claim to be Robert’s friend when he was no friend to Robert. But your heart’s too open and your faith too gr

m that were of my own house,” she added, after a moment’s pause. “And who am I that I should distrust my neighbours?—no, no, Mr Somerville. There is R

se ill companions—— Mind now, my dear lady. You say Robert will take c

with a smile and a sigh; “but, oh, he is

mother repeated them. “I am scarcely higher than his elbow,” she said, with a mo

oming after him, Lord bless us, it may just be life or death. Steek your doors, Mrs Ogilvy, steek your d

he could have, to his mother’s house. No, no. Violence had been done, there had been quarrels, and there had been bloodshed. But that was very different from Mr Somerville’s advices about the money in the house. Robbie’s friends might be dangerous men, they might lead him into many, many ill ways; but her little money—no, no, there could be nothing to do with that. She went home accordingly almost cheerfully. To be delivered from her own thoughts, and brought in face of the world, and taught to realise all that had happened as within the course of nature, and a thing to be faced and to be mended,

faults in him just because he was a boy no longer, but a man, with his own thoughts and his own ways! But to have been parted from him these few hours cleared up a great deal. She went home eagerly, her face regaining its colour and its bri