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for me in the porch, where the bees were humming amongst the flowers, and the cool breeze played. She took a chair in the doorway, and, bending forwards, rested her hands on her knees and looked into my face.

"It's the same face, after all," she said, "the innocent wee face I cradled many a time upon this bosom; the same that peeped into this cottage one spring day and left its memory behind it. Miss Pansie, had you given me time I should have known you. And they call you 'Pansie' still? "

"Yes, nurse, I shall never lose that name now." Then I hesitated, remembering who had praised, admired, and for ever hallowed it by his preference.

"And so you're all come to Crowland for good and aye! The Lord be praised for letting me live to see this day! At one time I never thought it. My lady, they said, could not abide Crowland after poor Miss Janette's death. Tell me, is she better, Miss Pansie?"

The

"Mamma is very delicate. She will always be that, nurse. doctors say her heart is diseased; but, with care and ordinary precaution in guarding her from sudden excitement, she may be spared to us for many years."

did not break outright, Miss
And how is your sister?'
You have never seen Violet since
Ah! you will admire Violet,
People, that is, strangers,

"Ah! it was a sad time she went through, young Master Philip's death, and she so set on him as she was; and then pretty Miss Janette! The wonder is her heart Pansie. The Lord's will be done. "She is quite well, thank you. she was a babe, have you, nurse? everyone does; she is so truly lovely. can hardly believe that we are sisters." "But you're lovely yourself, in your own way, my bairn. I don't wish to see a bonnier face. Has no one told you that for your own sake yet? Ah! I see where that flush of colour comes from! Well, I'll bide my time in patience, Miss Pansie, you'll tell me all some day, and may be these are but shy and early days yet. God bless you, my nurse bairn!"

Suddenly I remembered that it was a long walk back to the Abbey, and that I ought to be there by this time. I rose hastily from my seat, and bade Nurse Styleman good morning, promising to bring Violet to see her some day, soon. I passed down the garden walk, and out, through the gate, into the village street behind. Why should mamma, then Violet, and now Nurse Styleman, infer such things from my tell-tale face?

CHAPTER X.-CRAIGDALLIE'S RECEPTION.

The Forfadine Chronicle of this week contains the following paragraph:

"Lord Haig, who is but lately returned from an extended tour upon the Continent, is entertaining a party of distinguished guests at Craigdallie Castle, his hereditary seat in this county. The party includes Sir William and Lady Trevor and the Misses Trevor, from Crowland Abbey, Westernshire; Ernest De l'Orme, Esq., of Dellum Hall, Eastshire; Sir Angus and Lady Craven, Althorpe Lodge, in this county; and Lord Benson. For the amusement of his noble visitors Lord Haig has inaugurated a series of magnificent entertainments."

Yes, we are here in Lord Haig's ancestral home, and a glorious old place it is; but I must, as usual, leave all description for Pansie to give.

Our reception here a week ago transcended everything but what is usually accorded to royalty. It was like the enthusiastic ultrachivalric spirit of Lord Haig to devise and carry out such; but, in his own estimation, he seems unable sufficiently to heap the honours and hospitality of his house upon us. He thanked mamma over and over again for her goodness in coming to his fastness in the mountains, as he calls Craigdallie, and installed her at once as mistress of all it contains for the term of our visit. We have our own especial suite of apartments, in which mamma has her private rooms, where her seclusion is sacred whenever she does not feel well enough to join our gay assemblies, or wishes for quiet and solitude. Her will is law at Craigdallie; the servants, all taking their cue from their master, are most assiduous in their care for her comfort, and mamma declares she has never been so nearly a queen in her life before.

Our arrival is worth chronicling, nor must I omit a pretty little scene that followed close upon it.

Forfadine is ten miles distant, and as that is the nearest railway station, Lord Haig met us there with carriage, horses, and servants. The drive thence to Craigdallie is through some of the most romantic scenery of a country so renowned for beautiful scenery as Scotland. Although my little Pansie had so lately seen the Alps in all their lofty grandeur, her face was all aglow with delight ; papa and mamma were enraptured also. Our first consciousness that we were approaching Craigdallie was conveyed to us by a burst of musical pipes echoing over all the hills.

"Are those the bagpipes?" cried my little Heartsease.

Lord Haig smiled delightedly at her enthusiasm, and looked, as he was, immensely gratified by it.

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Yes, those are my native Highland pipes; I hope their strains will delight you, though I cannot expect them to have the same sound in Lowland ears that they have in mine.”

"I have so longed to hear them," cried Pansie; "sometimes, when I have been reading of Highland scenes and plaided warriors, I have closed my eyes and tried to imagine the mountain strains that kindled such patriotic fire in their hero hearts."

"If my pipers could hear you speak in that way they would play you such notes as the most vivid imagination cannot conceive the power of. Nothing inspires them like appreciation now that the old warlike feuds are no more. You shall have plenty of opportunity, if you wish it, while you are here, to listen to the martial strains of the pibroch, and the wail of the coronach, through the mountain passes, and trembling over the waters."

"That will be glorious!" cried my little Heartsease. you not like to hear them, Violet?"

"Shall

"I do not think there is much music in the pipes," I replied.

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Oh, Violet! it is not the music one thinks about, but the national associations they awaken. Don't you remember the description ?

"See the proud pipers on the bow,

And mark the gaudy streamers flow

From their loud chanters down, and sweep

The furrow'd bosom of the deep,

As, rushing through the lake amain,
They plied the ancient Highland strain.
Ever as on they bore, more loud.
And louder rung the pibroch proud.'

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Here Pansie paused, and papa took up the words.

"At first the sound, by distance tame,
Mellow'd along the waters came,
And, lingering long by cape and bay,
Wail'd every harsher note away;
Then bursting bolder on the ear,

The clan's shrill gathering they could hear.
Then prelude light of livelier tone

Express'd their merry marching on.
The rapid charge, the rallying shout,
Retreat borne headlong into rout,

And bursts of triumph, to declare

Clan Alpine's conquest-all were there.""

"You put the countrymen of our national bard to shame," said Lord Haig, regretfully; "it makes me blush to find more of his poetry in the hearts of English people than there is in my own." Papa replied.

"Every true Scot has the sentiments of the great Sir Walter enshrined in his heart of hearts, while it is the music of the rhythm that lingers in ours."

"The Lady of the Lake' has always been such a favourite poem

with Pansie," said mamma. was a little girl, and she once had the ambition even to commit the whole of it to memory."

"I used to read it to her when she

"I can imagine you succeeded," said Lord Haig to her.

"No, I did not; I failed in 'The Combat,' and never could say the whole of that canto through without being prompted."

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"Just the one part I did commit to memory when at school and retain still; so, you see, we can manage the whole of it between us.' At which Pansie coloured and turned away her head, and papa and mamma looked amused.

The little hamlet of Craigdallie lying at the foot of the height on the summit of which the castle is built, called the Castle-hill, was gay as gay could be for our reception. Floral arches spanned the roadway; pennons streamed and banners floated, on which were inscribed words of welcome in Gaelic and in English. The pipers met us at the commencement of the town proper (they call every little congregation of cottages a town here), and preceded us through the streets where the people were assembled in groups to see us pass; and the tune they played was,

"Oh! but ye've been lang in comin',

Lang in comin', lang in comin';

Oh! but ye've been lang in comin',
Thrice welcome!"

Papa could not help but acknowledge in words the flattering reception given to us.

"Do not mention it," said Lord Haig; and I fancied his voice was slightly unsteady. "It cannot convey to you half the pleasure it has given me to arrange it. I cannot make you sufficiently welcome to Craigdallie, nor show half the appreciation I feel of your kindness in coming to relieve the solitude of my mountain fastness. It is like an eagle's eyrie, only I have not the same capacity that the bird has for enjoying such an altitude above my kind. I should hardly have dared return to Scotland but for this promised visit."

Emerging from the floral archway we crossed the drawbridge and entered a courtyard levelled on the solid rock. Craigdallie Castle is quite regal in its magnificence. The entrance hall is very large, and has a high timbered roof that is considered a most valuable relic of antiquity.

We broke our journey at Edinburgh last night, and so only travelled from there this morning. We had plenty of time for rest and refreshment before the dinner gong sounded. Our rooms open into a long corridor curtained at the further end. Those curtains we have learnt since shut off Lord Haig's private apartments.

Mamma, having Mad'line in attendance upon her, would remain in her own room for that evening. When papa and Pansie and I

in dinner dress came forth on to the corridor Lord Haig himself appeared to act as our conductor to the drawing-room.

He gave his hand to Pansie with rather stately courtesy. I had previously noticed that Lord Haig, with the shadow of Craigdallie upon him, was hardly the same with the sunny-tempered companion of our sojourn at Geneva. Here, in spite of his indifferent height and slender figure, he spoke and moved every inch a lord. The small, patrician head was raised, the high-born features assumed a serene but gentle dignity not unbecoming to him; and yet I think I liked the gleeful abandon to the spirit of the moment that had so endeared him to all of us when abroad, and his more simple bearing, when the impulses of his heart spoke freely in his words and looks, better than this change, mais, noblesse oblige.

As we passed down the broad staircase papa paused upon the first landing to admire a beautiful painting that hung there. Papa is considered a clever connoisseur of art, and was attracted more by the execution of the picture than by the subject of it. It represents Abraham offering up his son Isaac. The youth lies bound upon the rude altar of sacrifice, and Abraham's eyes and hands are raised to the heavens, where a group of angel faces look down pityingly upon him. While papa scanned it closely through his eyeglass Lord Haig said, "I never look at this picture but I am reminded of the beautiful old legend which declares that the tears of pity shed by the angels then, falling upon the upturned face of Isaac, produced that merciful blindness of his old age."

"But was it a merciful blindness ?" I asked.

"Would you not consider it so? I should deem anything merciful that interposed itself between me and the sight of a loved face grown treacherous."

"The blindness induced the treachery," said papa.

"Not altogether, I think; it aided the practice of it."

"But if it were grown treacherous, no matter how dear the face _ad been before, I should cease to love it," I exclaimed.

Lord Haig shook his head.

"The ties of blood are not so easily broken; we cannot tear their clinging fibres from our hearts at will."

"You are forgetting the main subject of the picture," said Pansie, ' and taking exception to quite a minor one. Is not the figure of Abraham perfect, papa, and is not that expression of sublime devotion upon his face just such an one as the patriarch must really have worn when his heart triumphed over its human tenderness, and yielded the thing it most cherished in obedience to the Divine command?"

Papa replied to her with ample criticism, and then Lord Haig sked, inclining his head towards her, and speaking eagerly, “Do

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