e state of affairs at the farm-house on the morning of
Thanksgiving Day, when Hannah was making her preparations to go to
Grey's Park for two hours or more, just to sit through the dinner and
see Grey, whom she had not seen since his return from Europe.

Her father was not as well that morning. Thanksgiving was always a
terrible anniversary for him, for as on that day the several members of
a family meet again around the old hearth-stone, so the ghosts of the
past all came back to torture him and fill him with remorse.

"How it blows," he said, as the wind shook the windows of his room, and
went screaming around the corner of the house. "How it blows, and I seem
to hear voices in the storm--your voice, Hannah, as it sounded thirty
years ago, when you cried out so loudly, and I struck you for it, and
beat old Rover, too. Do you remember it?"

"Yes, yes, father, but don't talk of it to-day; try to forget; try to
think only that Grey is here, and that you will see him to-morrow."

"Grey, the boy with the big blue eyes which look so straight at you that
I used sometimes to wonder if he did not see into my heart and know what
I was hiding?" the old man replied. "Grey, the little boy who would sit
on that bench in the woodshed, and kick the floor until I sweat at every
pore with fear, and whom I would not touch till he captured my hands,
and held them in his soft, warm ones, and kissed them, too, my wicked
old hands, kissed by Grey's baby lips. Would he touch them now if he
knew? I used to think if I lived till he was a man I would tell him; and
maybe you will do it after I am dead. He is coming here to-morrow, you
say, and Burton; but Burton isn't like Grey. He is proud and worldly,
and a little hard, I am afraid; but the boy, tell him how I love him;
try to make him understand, and when he comes to-morrow maybe he will
kiss me again. It will be for the last time. I shall never see him more.
But hark, what's that? Don't you hear bells? And there is the stamping
of feet at the door. Go, child, quickly, and not let them in here."

Hannah, too, heard the sound and the opening of the kitchen door, and
hurrying from her father's bedside, she called out, sharply:

"Who is it? Who's there?"

"My name is Norval, on the Grampian hills," was replied, in the
well-remembered voice of Grey, who continued, merrily, as he approached
her: "And you, dear Aunt Hannah, you are the dame with the wonderful
name which forward and backward s