They called the place
Ythan Brae, and the clear shallow brook that ran down from their rocky
pastures, through the swamp to Beaver River, they called the Ythan Burn
because the familiar names were pleasant on their lips and in their ears
in a strange land; but it was a long time before it seemed like home to
them.

For a while the neighbours knew about them only what could be learned
from the fields visible from the North Gore road. That Mr Fleming had
experience, tireless industry, and some money, three things to insure
success in his calling, the canny Scotch farmers were not slow to
perceive in the change that gradually came over the once-neglected land.
Mr Fleming seemed a grave, silent man, with the traces of some severe
trouble showing in his face. And this trouble his wife had shared, for,
though she was still a young woman when she came to Gershom, there were
streaks of white in her brown hair, and on her fair, serene face there
was the look which "tells of sorrow meekly borne." The gloom and
sternness which sometimes made people shrink from coming in contact with
her husband was never seen in her.

The eldest of their two sons was almost a man when they came to live at
Ythan Brae. He was a quiet, well-doing lad, reserved like his father,
but pleasant-spoken and friendly like his mother. His brother Hugh had
inherited his mother's good looks and sunny temper, and he had, besides,
the power which does not always accompany the possession of personal
beauty or cleverness--the power of winning love.

Long afterward, when the mention of Hugh's name was a sorrowful matter,
the people of the North Gore who knew him best used to speak of him with
a kind of wonder. He was such "a bonny laddie," with eyes like stars,
and even at sixteen a head above his elder brother. He was so blithe
and kindly, and clever too. According to these people there was nothing
he could not do, and nothing that he would not trouble himself to do to
give pleasure to his friends. He was "the apple of his father's eye,"
the delight of his life; and that his mother's heart did not break when
she lost him, was only because, even at the worst of times, God's grace
is sufficient for help and healing to those who stay themselves on Him.

For Hugh "went wrong." Oh, sorrowful words! seeming so little and
meaning so much: care and fear, watching and waiting, sleepless nights
and days of dread to those who looked on with no power to bring hi