is to the fore, and
meantime the lads and lasses must have their schooling and Tam his
trade. But I keep on clavering about my own concerns, while you are in
doubt and difficulties about yours. When do you leave Cross Hall?"

"I should like to leave on Wednesday, for my cousin comes to take
possession on that day, and Elsie cannot bear any one to see us bidding
farewell to our dear old home."

"I cannot just flit before Thursday."

"Well, I suppose we must stay to welcome the new owner; I have no
objection to doing so."

"It may be painful to your feelings, Miss Melville, but yet I think it
would be but right. There are things you may mention to the new man
that would do good to them that are left behind you. That poor blind
widow, Jeanie Weir, that you send her dinner to every day, would miss
her dole if it was not kept up; and I know there are more than her that
you want to speak a good word for. I hear no ill of this Maister
Francis; and though we all grudge him the kingdom he has come into, it
may be that he will rule it worthily."

Chapter VI.

A Bundle Of Old Letters

Elsie had a headache when Francis came to take possession of his new
home, and scarcely made her appearance; but Jane, who felt none of her
sister's shrinking from him, showed him over the house, and told him
how it had been managed, hoped he would keep the present servants, and
particularly recommended to his care the gardener, who, though rather
superannuated and rheumatic, had been forty years in the service of the
family, and understood the soil and the treatment of it very well.

He was not only glad to hear what she said, but was resolved to be
guided by it, and took a memorandum of her poor pensioners, that they,
at least, should not suffer by Mr. Hogarth's will.

Then she walked with him over the grounds, and pointed out what
improvements her uncle had made, and what more he had contemplated
making. She was rather deficient in taste for rural beauty. She loved
Cross Hall because it was her home, and because she had been happy
there, rather than because she fully appreciated the loveliness of the
situation and the prospect. Her cousin, townsman as he was, had far
more natural taste. It was romantically situated, and the grounds were
beautifully laid out; there were pretty hamlets in the distance,
gentlemen's country seats embowered in trees, green cornfields, merry
brooks, and winding valleys. Francis' eyes and heart were fi