ed here yesterday evening,--on his way to Mr. Hardwick's, I
guess."

"Why didn't he ask _me_ if you could go? I think he's pretty free
to send my girls about the town on his errands."

"You were out, Ma'am,--in the next house; and after he'd gone I forgot
it."

"You remembered it to-day, it seems."

"Yes'm; after dinner I thought of it and hurried right off; but granny
was sick and foolish, and didn't want to let me come away, so I
couldn't get back as quick as I meant to."

"Well, you can go to the kitchen."

"Yes'm."

"I must keep an eye on that girl," thought Mrs. Kinloch. "She is
easily persuaded, fickle, without strong sense, and with only a very
shallow kind of cunning. She might do mischief. What can Squire Clamp
want? The old hovel her grandmother lives in isn't worth fifty
dollars. Whatever has been going on, I'm glad Hugh is not mixed up in
it."

Just then Hugh rode up, and, tying his horse, came in. He seemed to
have lost something of the gayety of the morning. "I am tired," he
said. "I had to get off and lead the pony down the hill, and it's
steep and stony enough."

"There are pleasant roads enough in the neighborhood," said his
mother, "without your being obliged to take to the woods and clamber
over the mountains."

"I know it," he replied; "but I had been up towards the Allen place,
and I took a notion to come back over the hill."

"Then you passed Lucy's house?"

"Yes. The bridle-path leads down the hill about a mile above this; but
on foot one may keep along the ridge and come down into the valley
through our garden."

"So I suppose; in fact, I believe Lucy has just returned that way."

"Indeed! it's strange I didn't see her."

"It is strange."

Hugh bore the quiet scrutiny well, and his mother came to the
conclusion that the girl had told the truth about her going for the
lawyer.

Presently Mildred came down from her room, and after a few minutes
Mrs. Kinloch went out, casting a fixed and meaning look at her
son. She seemed as impatient for the issue of her scheme, as the child
who, after planting a seed, waits for the green shoot, and twice a day
digs down to see if it has not sprouted.

Mildred, as the reader may suppose, was not likely to be very
agreeable to her companion; the recollections of the day were too
vivid, too delicious.

She could not part with them, but constantly repeated to herself the
words of love, of hope, and enthusiasm, which she had heard. So she
m