doing, as
silent consolation for every thing, to her own tribe of "motherless
bairns"--she stooped forward and kissed him.

The little earl was so astonished that he blushed up to the very brow.
But from that minute he loved Helen Cardross, and never ceased loving
her to the end of his days.

She led the way to the Manse, which was so close behind the kirk that
the back windows of it looked on the grave-yard. But in front there was
a beautiful lawn and garden--the prettiest Manse garden that ever was
seen. Helen stepped through it with her light, quick step, a child
clinging to each hand, often turning round to speak to Malcolm or to the
earl. He followed her with his eyes and thought she was like a picture
he had once seen of a guardian angel leading two children along, though
there was not a bit of the angel about Helen Cardross--externally at
least, she being one of those large, rosy, round-face, flaxen-haired
Scotch girls who are far from pretty even in youth, and in middle age
sometimes grow quite coarse and plain. She would not do so, and did
not; for any body so good, so sweet, so bright, must always carry about
with her, even to old age, something which, if not beauty's self, is
beauty's atmosphere, and which often creates, even around unlovely
people, a light and glory as perfect as the atmosphere round the sun.

She took her seat--her poor mother's that used to be--at the head
of the Manse table--which was a little quieter on Sundays than
week-days, and especially this Sunday, when the children were all awed
and shy before their new visitor. Helen had previously taken them all
aside, and explained to them that they were not to notice any thing in
the earl that was different from other people--that he was a poor
little crippled boy who had neither father, mother, brother, nor sister,
that they were to be very kind to him, but not to look at him much, and
to make no remarks upon him on any account whatever.

And so, even though he was placed on baby's high chair, and fed by
Malcolm almost as if he were a baby--he who, though no bigger than a
baby, was in reality a boy of ten years old, whom papa talked to, and
who talked with papa almost as cleverly as Helen herself--still the
Manse children were so well behaved that nothing occurred to make any
body uncomfortable.

For the little earl, he seemed to enjoy himself amazingly. He sat in
his high chair, and looked round the well-filled table with mingled