'Now, please, just stop here for a minute or two, said Margaret.

'These are the cottages that haunted me so during the rainy

fortnight, reproaching me for not having sketched them.' 'Before they tumbled down and were no more seen. Truly, if they

are to be sketched--and they are very picturesque--we had better

not put it off till next year. But where shall we sit?' 'Oh! You might have come straight from chambers in the Temple,'

instead of having been two months in the Highlands! Look at this

beautiful trunk of a tree, which the wood-cutters have left just

in the right place for the light. I will put my plaid over it,

and it will be a regular forest throne.' 'With your feet in that puddle for a regal footstool! Stay, I

will move, and then you can come nearer this way. Who lives in

these cottages?' 'They were built by squatters fifty or sixty years ago. One is

uninhabited; the foresters are going to take it down, as soon as

the old man who lives in the other is dead, poor old fellow!

Look--there he is--I must go and speak to him. He is so deaf you

will hear all our secrets.' The old man stood bareheaded in the sun, leaning on his stick at

the front of his cottage. His stiff features relaxed into a slow

smile as Margaret went up and spoke to him. Mr. Lennox hastily

introduced the two figures into his sketch, and finished up the

landscape with a subordinate reference to them--as Margaret

perceived, when the time came for getting up, putting away water,

and scraps of paper, and exhibiting to each other their sketches.

She laughed and blushed Mr. Lennox watched her countenance.

'Now, I call that treacherous,' said she. 'I little thought you

were making old Isaac and me into subjects, when you told me to

ask him the history of these cottages.' 'It was irresistible. You can't know how strong a temptation it

was. I hardly dare tell you how much I shall like this sketch.' He was not quite sure whether she heard this latter sentence

before she went to the brook to wash her palette. She came back

rather flushed, but looking perfectly innocent and unconscious.

He was glad of it, for the speech had slipped from him

unawares--a rare thing in the case of a man who premeditated his

actions so much as Henry Lennox.

The aspect of home was all right and bright when they reached it.

The clouds on her mother's brow had cleared off under the

propitious influence of a brace of carp, most opportunely

presented by a neighbour. Mr. Hale had returned from his

morning's round, and was awaiting his visitor just outside the

wicket gate that led into the garden. He looked a complete

gentleman in his rather threadbare coat and well-worn hat.




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