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what a blessed day was the day of his return! Yet in the prime of life,
by disease unbroken, and with a heart full to overflowing with all its
old sacred affections, he came back to his father's lowly cottage, and
wept as he crossed the threshold. His parents needed not any of his
wealth; but they were blamelessly proud, nevertheless, of his honest
acquisitions--proud when he became a landholder in his native parish,
and employed the sons of his old companions, and some of his old
companions themselves, in the building of his unostentatious mansion, or
in cultivating the wild but not unlovely moor, which was dear to him for
the sake of the countless remembrances that clothed the bare banks of
its lochs, and murmured in the little stream that ran among the pastoral
braes. The new mansion is a couple of miles from his parental Cottage;
but not a week, indeed seldom half that time, elapses, without a visit
to that dear dwelling. They likewise not unfrequently visit him--for his
wife is dear to them as a daughter of their own; and the ancient couple
delight in the noise and laughter of his pretty flock. Yet the son
understands perfectly well that the aged people love best their own
roof--and that its familiar quiet is every day dearer to their
habituated affections. Therefore he makes no parade of filial
tenderness--forces nothing new upon them--is glad to see the
uninterrupted tenor of their humble happiness; and if they are proud of
him, which all the parish knows, so is there not a child within its
bounds that does not know that Mr Airlie, the rich gentleman from India,
loves his poor father and mother as tenderly as if he had never left
their roof; and is prouder of them, too, than if they were clothed in
fine raiment, and fared sumptuously every day. Mr Airlie of the Mount
has his own seat in the gallery of the Kirk--his father, as an Elder,
sits below the pulpit--but occasionally the pious and proud son joins
his mother in the pew, where he and his brothers sat long ago; and every
Sabbath one or other of his children takes its place beside the
venerated matron. The old man generally leaves the churchyard leaning on
his Gilbert's arm--and although the sight has long been so common as to
draw no attention, yet no doubt there is always an under and unconscious
pleasure in many a mind witnessing the sacredness of the bond of blood.
Now and then the old matron is prevailed upon, when the weather is bad
and roads miry, to