But I learnt to love it for better things than
stateliness, before very long. I was ill-pleased when they first spoke
of pulling it down, but, as you say, it is a dreary object, now that it
is no longer used, and the sooner it goes the better."

"Yes, a ruin to be an object of interest, should be of grey stone, with
wallflowers and ivy growing over it," said Graeme.

"Yes, but this is not a country for ruins, and such like sorrowful
things. The old kirk was good enough to worship in, to my thinking, for
many a year to come; and the new one will ay lack something that the old
one had, to you and me, and many a one besides; but the sooner the
forsaken old place is taken quite away, the better, now."

"Yes, there is nothing venerable in broken sashes, and fluttering
shingles. But I wish they had repaired it for a while, or at any rate,
built the new one on the same site. We shall never have any pleasant
associations with the new red brick affair that the Merleville people
are so proud of."

And so they lingered and talked about many a thing besides the unsightly
old meeting-house--things that had happened in the old time, when the
bairns were young, and the world was to them a world in which each had a
kingdom to conquer, a crown to win. Those happy, happy days!

"Oh! well," said Mrs Snow, as they rose to go up the hill again, "it's
a bonny place, and I have learnt to love it well. But if any one had
told me in those days, that the time would come, when this and no other
place in the world would seem like home to me, it would have been a
foolishness in my ears."

"Ah! what a sad dreary winter that first one was to you, Janet, though
it was so merry to the boys and me," said Graeme. "It would have
comforted you then, if you could have known how it would be with you
now, and with Sandy."

"I am not so sure of that, my dear. We are untoward creatures, at the
best, and the brightness of to-day, would not have looked like
brightness then. No, love, the changes that seem so good and right to
look back upon, would have dismayed me, could I have seen them before
me. It is well that we must just live on from one day to another,
content with what each one brings."

"Ah! if we could always do that!" said Graeme, sighing.

"My bairn, we can. Though I mind, even in those old happy days, you had
a sorrowful fashion of adding the morrow's burden to the burden of
to-day. But that is past with you now, surely, after