The bright summer day had reached its dying hour when the little group stood on the bank of the river.  The yellow sunlight was merging into deep orange and crimson, tinging with a wonderful variety of tints the lower landscape.  The rippling water looked as if a sudden cross current of red wine had come flowing into it, and the little hillocks beyond, golden with gorse, were steeped in the mellow light.

The children followed their mother and Jean, with awed faces and hushed voices, along the little gleaming sheep-walk, fringed by sweet wild thyme and dog violets, with tendrils of deerhorn moss flinging their arms across the path.  At length they came on a little marble slab, by the side of one of the knolls.  The last golden shafts of sunlight were stealing over its memorial words, and the young eyes read in silence:—­

  In memory of

  Geordie Baxter,

  Who went to the Fold above on the
  7th of August, 185—.

  “The Lord is my Shepherd;
  I shall not want.”

Presently, the silent group heard footsteps behind, and when Grace glanced round she saw a woman, with two little boys by her side, coming along the little path towards the headstone.  She stopped suddenly when she saw the strangers, evidently surprised by the unusual presence of visitors in that unfrequented spot, and, turning down another path, went away in the opposite direction.  “Who is that, Jean?” asked Mrs. Foster; “surely I have seen the face before.”

“Dear heart, do ye not know her?  It’s Elsie Gray.  We dinna think, John and me, that her bonnie face is much changed; but then we see it every day,” Jean replied, looking fondly after the retreating figure.

“Ah, is it really Elsie?  I was just going to ask about her, Jean.  But who are those children with her?  I thought you told me in one of your letters that she lived quite alone?” asked Grace, stooping down to pluck a bluebell from Geordie’s grave, instead of hurrying after this old friend, as the little Grace expected her mother to do.

Then the little matron went on to narrate how Elsie’s home was still the forester’s pretty cottage, though her father and mother were both dead.  She had never been married, which Jean remarked was a great pity, and hinted that a good many other people were of her opinion.  But how the parish of Kirklands could ever have got on without her if she had gone away, or what life would be if she had not Elsie to go to in every joy and sorrow, Jean could not imagine, as she said she frequently remarked to “her John.”  Nobody’s hands seemed to be fuller of helpful work, and nobody did it more cheerily, than Elsie Gray.

Then Jean explained that the two little boys were orphans whom she had taken to her comfortable home; and “it wasn’t the first pair o’ laddies she had made good for something,” Jean added, admiringly.

“Oh, mamma, don’t you want to speak to her?  She has such a nice, beautiful face.  Do let me run after her, and ask her to stop for a minute,” said little Grace, eagerly.