y trouble,
mother; he is, I daresay, as much accustomed to plain fare as myself.
Only, however, we must get an additional pint of _yill_ from the
_clachan;_ you know this is my last evening with you, and was to be
a merry one at any rate." The woman looked me full in the face.

"Matthew Lindsay!" she exclaimed--"can you have forgotten your poor old
aunt Margaret!" I grasped her hand.

"Dearest aunt, this is surely most unexpected! How could I have so much
as dreamed you were within a hundred miles of me?" Mutual congratulation
ensued.

"This," she said, turning to my companion, "is the nephew I have so
often told you about, and so often wished to bring you acquainted with.
He is, like yourself, a great reader and a great thinker, and there is
no need that your proud, kindly heart should be jealous of him; for he
has been ever quite as poor, and maybe the poorer of the two." After
still more of greeting and congratulation, the young man rose.

"The night is dark, mother," he said, "and the road to the clachan a
rough one; besides you and your kinsman will have much to say to one
another. I shall just slip out to the clachan for you; and you shall
both tell me on my return whether I am not a prime judge of ale."

"The kindest heart, Matthew, that ever lived," said my relative, as he
left the house; "ever since he came to Kirkoswald, he has been both son
and daughter to me, and I shall feel twice a widow when he goes away."

"I am mistaken, aunt," I said, "if he be not the strongest minded man I
ever saw. Be assured he stands high among the aristocracy of nature,
whatever may be thought of him in Kirkoswald. There is a robustness of
intellect, joined to an overmastering force of character, about him,
which I have never yet seen equalled, though I have been intimate with
at least one very superior mind, and with hundreds of the class who pass
for men of talent. I have been thinking ever since I met with him, of
the William Tells and William Wallaces of history--men who, in those
times of trouble which unfix the foundations of society, step out from
their obscurity to rule the destiny of nations."

"I was ill about a month ago," said my relative--"so very ill that I
thought I was to have done with the world altogether; and Robert was
both nurse and physician to me--he kindled my fire, too, every morning,
and sat up beside me sometimes for the greater part of the night. What
wonder I should love him as my own child? Ha