Meanwhile, Geordie and his little sister were toiling along the dusty highway in an excited, expectant state of mind.  The shady elm avenue was a refreshing change after the hot white turnpike road.  Geordie looked keenly about him, noting all the well-kept walks and shrubberies, among which he saw many plants that were not natives of the valley, and thought he should like, sometime, to examine them more closely.

At last they came in sight of the grey gables of the old mansion, and little Jean grasped her brother’s hand more closely, and looked up with a frightened glance at the many windows, which seemed to her like so many great eyes all staring at her.  She began to wish that she was safe back in her granny’s cottage again, but consoled herself by thinking that as long as she had hold of Geordie’s hand nothing very dreadful could possibly happen.  Geordie, too, was somewhat overawed by the nearer view of the “big hoose,” which certainly seemed much more formidable in its dimensions than it did from the moorland, where he used to get a glimpse of it while he watched the sheep, and then it looked no larger than the grey cairn which he made his watch-tower, but now it seemed to frown above him, and the windows, too, began to create uncomfortable sensations in his mind as well as Jean’s.

With the sight of his friend of the stepping-stones, his flagging courage returned, for had he not conversed with her on his own domain, and been invited by her to pay this visit?

“This is Jean,” he said, immediately looking up at Grace with his frank smile, as he gave his sister a little push forward.

“I have kept my tryst, ye see.  You thought, maybe, I wouldna mind,” he added, smiling again at the absurdity of the idea that he should forget such an eventful engagement.  “I am so very glad to see you, Geordie, and Jean, too.  I must say I was a little afraid that you might forget to come,” added Grace, quite in a flutter of delight over the arrival of her scholars, which they little dreamt of.  Then she happened to glance at Jean, who stood clutching her brother’s corduroys in a very frightened attitude, and Grace remembered that this was also a new experience for the scholars, and perhaps they, too, might be suffering from the nervousness which had been following her from the lawn to the class-room for the last hour as she waited for them.

Putting out her hand to Jean, she said, in an encouraging tone, “Come, I dare say you must be tired after your walk in this hot afternoon.  We shall go to a little room that my aunt has given us to sit in, and see if we cannot find something nice to read and learn,” and Grace led the way up the old steps and across the hall, then through what appeared to the children quite a bewildering maze of dark passages, so dim and sombre after the bright sunshine, that Grace overheard Jean say in an, abrupt whisper, which was instantly smothered by her brother, “I’m afraid, Geordie; I’m no gain’ farther upon this dark road.”