red that his prior question was fraught
with pain.

"Yes--yes," she replied, with a sudden start, as if relieved from pain,
while she regained her feet; "yonder lives my mother."

The stranger stood with his eyes fixed upon her, as if in deep scrutiny
of the inexplicable features of her character and appearance; but he
added not a word, till he saw her move as if she wished to be gone.

"You will go with me?" he said.

But the words were scarcely uttered, when she was away through the
woods, leaving him to seek his way to the house of her mother, whither,
accordingly, he directed his steps, from some prior knowledge he
possessed of the locality about which he had been making inquiries. As
he went along, he seemed wrapt in meditation--again and again looking
back, to endeavour to get another sight of the girl, who was now seated
on the edge of the stream, and again seized by some engrossing thought
that claimed all the energies of his spirit. On coming up to the door of
the cottage, he tapped gently with his long staff; and, upon being
required by the dame to enter, he passed into the middle of the floor,
and stood and surveyed the house and its inmate.

"I have nothing for you," said the latter; "so you must pass on to those
whom God has ordained as the distributors of what the needy require.
Alas! I am myself but a beggar."

The words seemed to have been wrung out of her by the meditative mood in
which the stranger had found her, and, whether it was that the interest
which had been excited in him by the appearance of the daughter had
been increased by the confession of the mother, or that there was some
secret cause working in his mind, he passed his hand over his eyes, and
for a moment turned away his head.

"I have been both a beggar and a giver in my day," he replied, as he
laid down his hat and staff, and took a chair opposite to the dame; "and
I am weary of the one character and of the other. I have got with a
curse; and I have given for ingratitude. But I may here give, and you
may receive, without either. There is an unoccupied bed; I am weary of
wandering, and have enough to pay for rest."

"That is better than charity," rejoined the dame--"ay, even the charity
of the stranger."

"And why of the _stranger_, dame?" added he. "I have hitherto thought
that the charity of _friends_ was that which might be most easily borne.
And who may be your benefactor?"

"Hector Hayston of Whitecraigs," replied she,