ling imbued her whole character;
and sometimes when the young Ladies from the Castle smiled praises upon
her, she retired in gratitude to her chamber--and wept.

Among the friends at whose houses she visited were the family at
Moorside, the highest hill-farm in the parish, and on which her father
had been a hind. It consisted of the master, a man whose head was grey,
his son and daughter, and a grandchild, her scholar, whose parents were
dead. Gilbert Adamson had long been a widower--indeed his wife had never
been in the parish, but had died abroad. He had been a soldier in his
youth and prime of manhood; and when he came to settle at Moorside, he
had been looked at with no very friendly eyes; for evil rumours of his
character had preceded his arrival there--and in that peaceful pastoral
parish, far removed from the world's strife, suspicions, without any
good reason perhaps, had attached themselves to the morality and
religion of a man, who had seen much foreign service, and had passed the
best years of his life in the wars. It was long before these suspicions
faded away, and with some they still existed in an invincible feeling of
dislike, or even aversion. But the natural fierceness and ferocity
which, as these peaceful dwellers among the hills imagined, had at
first, in spite of his efforts to control them, often dangerously
exhibited themselves in fiery outbreaks, advancing age had gradually
subdued; Gilbert Adamson had grown a hard-working and industrious man;
affected, if he followed it not in sincerity, even an austerely
religious life; and as he possessed more than common sagacity and
intelligence, he had acquired, at last, if not won, a certain ascendancy
in the parish, even over many whose hearts never opened nor warmed
towards him--so that he was now an elder of the kirk--and, as the most
unwilling were obliged to acknowledge, a just steward to the poor. His
grey hairs were not honoured, but it would not be too much to say that
they were respected. Many who had doubted him before came to think they
had done him injustice, and sought to wipe away their fault by regarding
him with esteem, and showing themselves willing to interchange all
neighbourly kindnesses and services with all the family at Moorside. His
son, though somewhat wild and unsteady, and too much addicted to the
fascinating pastimes of flood and field, often so ruinous to the sons of
labour, and rarely long pursued against the law without vitiati