elow the eyes a livid
shadow darkened the faded face that had no other color in it.

The tears welled up into my eyes, and the woman, seeing them, suddenly
stopped ironing and exclaimed eagerly: "Ou, mem, ye ken the family; or
maybe ye'll hae been a friend of the puir thing's mither!" I was obliged
to say that I neither knew them nor any thing about them, but that the
child's piteous aspect had made me cry.

In answer to the questions with which I then plied her, the woman, who
seemed herself affected by the impression I had received from the poor
little creature's appearance, told me that the child was that of the
only daughter of the people who owned the place; that there was
"something wrong" about it all, she did not know what--a marriage
ill-pleasing to the grandparents perhaps, perhaps even worse than that;
but the mother was dead, the family had been abroad for upward of three
years, and the child had been left under her charge. This was all she
told me, and probably all she knew; and as she ended she wiped the tears
from her own eyes, adding, "I'm thinking the puir bairn will no live
long itsel'."

The rain was over and the sun shone, and I got up to go; as I went, the
child's dreary eyes followed me out at the door, and I cried all the way
home. Was it possible that my appearance suggested to that tiny soul the
image of its young lost mother?

The other incident in my rambles that I wish to record was of a far
pleasanter sort. I had gone down to the pier at Newhaven, one blowy,
blustering day (the fine Granton Pier Hotel and landing-place did not
yet exist), and stood watching the waves taking their mad run and leap
over the end of the pier, in a glorious, foaming frenzy that kept me
fascinated with the fine uproar, till it suddenly occurred to me that it
would be delightful to be out among them (I certainly could have had no
recollections of sea-sickness), and I determined to try and get a boat
and go out on the frith.

I stopped at a cottage on the outskirts of the fishing town (it was not
much more than a village then) of Newhaven, and knocked. Invited to come
in, I did so, and there sat a woman, one of the very handsomest I ever
saw, in solitary state, leisurely combing a magnificent curtain of fair
hair that fell over her ample shoulders and bosom and almost swept the
ground. She was seated on a low stool, but looked tall as well as large,
and her foam-fresh complexion and gray-green eyes might have b