Project Gutenberg's The Orphans of Glen Elder, by Margaret Murray Robertson

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Title: The Orphans of Glen Elder

Author: Margaret Murray Robertson

Illustrator: G.E. Robertson

Release Date: February 3, 2009 [EBook #27983]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Orphans of Glen Elder, by Margaret Murray Robertson.

CHAPTER ONE.

AUNT JANET'S VISIT.

"Up to the fifth landing, and then straight on. You canna miss the
door."

For a moment the person thus addressed stood gazing up into the darkness
of the narrow staircase, and then turned wearily to the steep ascent.
No wonder she was weary; for at the dawn of that long August day, now
closing so dimly over the smoky town, her feet had pressed the purple
heather on the hills that skirt the little village of Kirklands. A
neighbouring farmer had driven her part of the way, but she had walked
since then seven-and-twenty miles of the distance that lay between her
and her home.

But it was not weariness alone that deepened the shadow on her brow as
she passed slowly upwards. Uncertainty with regard to the welfare of
dear friends had long been taking the form of anxious fears; and now her
fears were rapidly changing into a certainty of evil. Her heart
sickened within her as she breathed the hot, stifling air; for she knew
that her only brother's orphan children had breathed no other air than
that during the long, hot weeks of summer.

At length she reached the door to which she had been directed; and, as
she stood for a moment before it, the prayer that had often risen in her
heart that day, burst, in strong, brief words, from her lips.

There was no sound in the room, and it was some time before her eyes
became accustomed to the dim light around her. Then the glimpse she
caught, through the half-open door, of one or two familiar objects,--the
desk which had been her father's, and the high-backed chair of carved
oak in which her mother used to sit so many, many years ago,--assured
her that she had reached her journey's end.

On a low bed, just opposite the door