difference was too small to be detected by any but those who were
quite accustomed to his forms of thought and expression. How much
of it Janet understood or sympathized with, it is difficult to say;
for anything that could be called a thought rarely crossed the
threshold of her utterance. On this occasion, the moment the prayer
was ended, she rose from her knees, smoothed down her check apron,
and went to the door; where, shading her eyes from the sun with her
hand, she peered from under its penthouse into the fir-wood, and
said in a voice softened apparently by the exercise in which she had
taken a silent share,

"Whaur can the lassie be?"

And where was the lassie? In the fir-wood, to be sure, with the
thousand shadows, and the sunlight through it all; for at this
moment the light fell upon her far in its depths, and revealed her
hastening towards the cottage in as straight a line as the trees
would permit, now blotted out by a crossing shadow, and anon radiant
in the sunlight, appearing and vanishing as she threaded the upright
warp of the fir-wood. It was morning all around her; and one might
see that it was morning within her too, as, emerging at last in the
small open space around the cottage, Margaret--I cannot call her
Meg, although her mother does--her father always called her "Maggy,
my doo," Anglice, dove--Margaret approached her mother with a bright
healthful face, and the least possible expression of uneasiness on
her fair forehead. She carried a book in her hand.

"What gars ye gang stravaguin' that get, Meg, whan ye ken weel
eneuch ye sud a' been in to worship lang syne? An sae we maun hae
worship our lanes for want o' you, ye hizzy!"