ng the
whole character, was a favourite with all the parish. Singularly
handsome, and with manners above his birth, Ludovic was welcome
wherever he went, both with young and old. No merry-making could deserve
the name without him; and at all meetings for the display of feats of
strength and agility, far and wide through more counties than one he was
the champion. Nor had he received a mean education. All that the parish
schoolmaster could teach he knew; and having been the darling companion
of all the gentlemen's sons in the Manse, the faculties of his mind had
kept pace with theirs, and from them he had caught unconsciously that
demeanour so far superior to what could have been expected from one in
his humble condition, but which, at the same time, seemed so congenial
with his happy nature as to be readily acknowledged to be one of its
original gifts. Of his sister, Alice, it is sufficient to say, that she
was the bosom-friend of Margaret Burnside, and that all who saw their
friendship felt that it was just. The small parentless granddaughter was
also dear to Margaret--more than perhaps her heart knew, because that,
like herself, she was an orphan. But the creature was also a merry and a
madcap child, and her freakish pranks, and playful perversenesses, as
she tossed her head in untamable glee, and went dancing and singing,
like a bird on the boughs of a tree, all day long, by some strange
sympathy entirely won the heart of her who, throughout all her own
childhood, had been familiar with grief, and a lonely shedder of tears.
And thus did Margaret love her, it might be said, even with a very
mother's love. She generally passed her free Saturday afternoons at
Moorside, and often slept there all night with little Ann in her bosom.
At such times Ludovic was never from home, and many a Sabbath he walked
with her to the kirk--all the family together--and _once_ by themselves
for miles along the moor--a forenoon of perfect sunshine, which returned
upon him in his agony on his dying day.

No one said, no one thought that Ludovic and Margaret were lovers--nor
were they, though well worthy indeed of each other's love; for the
orphan's whole heart was filled and satisfied with a sense of duty, and
all its affections were centred in her school, where all eyes blessed
her, and where she had been placed for the good of all those gladsome
creatures, by them who had rescued her from the penury that kills the
soul, and whose gracious