"You are a good man, Mr. Cardross," replied the Edinburg writer,
huskily, as he rose from his seat, and declining another glass of the
claret, of which, under some shallow pretext, he had sent a supply into
the minister's empty cellar, he crossed the grass-plot, and spent the
rest of the evening beside his ward and Helen.





Chapter 5

Days, months, and years slip smoothly by on the shores of Loch Beg.
Even now, though the cruelly advancing finger of Civilization has
touched it, dotted it with genteel villas on either side, plowed it with
smoky steam boats, and will shortly frighten the innocent fishes by
dropping a marine telegraph wire across the mouth of the loch, it is a
peaceful place still. But when the last Earl of Cairnforth was a child
it was all peace. In summertime a few stray tourists would wander past
it, wondering at its beauty; but in winter it had hardly any
communication with the outer world. The Manse, the Castle, and the
clachan, with a few outlying farm-houses, comprised the whole of the
Cairnforth; and the little peninsula, surrounded on three sides by
water, and on the fourth by hills, was sufficiently impregnable and
isolated to cause existence to flow on there very quietly, in what
townspeople call dullness, and country people repose.

For, whatever repose there may be in country life--real country--
there is certainly no monotony. The perpetual change of seasons,
varying the aspect of the outside world every month, every week--nay,