“His lordship may live to be an auld man yet,” said some one to Malcolm, and Malcolm indignantly repudiated the possibility of any thing else.

The minister was left a little lonely during this week of Lord Cairnforth’s coming home, but he did not seem to feel it.  He felt nothing very much now except pleasure in the sunshine and the fire, in looking at the outside of his books, now rarely opened, and in watching the bright faces around him.  He was made to understand what a grand festival was to be held at Cairnforth, and the earl took especial pains to arrange that the feeble octogenarian should be brought to the Castle without fatigue, and enabled to appear both at the tenants’ feast in the kitchen, and the more formal banquet of friends and neighbors in the hall—­the grand old dining-room—­which was arranged exactly as it had been on the earl’s coming of age.

However, there was a difference.  Then the board was almost empty, now it was quite full.  With a carefulness that at the time Helen almost wondered at, the earl collected about him that day the most brilliant gathering he could invite from all the country round—­people of family, rank, and wealth—­above all, people of worth; who, either by inherited position, or that high character which is the best possession of all, could confer honor by their presence, and who, since “a man is known by his friends,” would be suitable and creditable friends to a young man just entering the world.

And before all these, with Helen sitting as mistress at the foot of the table, and Helen’s father at his right hand, the Earl of Cairnforth introduced, in a few simple words, his chosen heir.

“Deliberately chosen,” he added; “not merely as being my cousin and my nearest of kin, but because he is his mother’s son, and Mr. Cardross’s grandson, and worthy of them both—­also because, for his own sake, I respect him, and I love him.  I give you the health of Alexander Cardross Bruce-Montgomerie.”

And then they all wished the young man joy, and the dining-hall of Cairnforth Castle rang with hearty cheers for Mr. Bruce-Montgomerie.

No more speeches were made, for it was noticed that Lord Cairnforth looked excessively wearied; but he kept his place to the last.  Of the many brilliant circles that he had entertained at his hospitable board, none were ever more brilliant than this; none gayer, with the genial, wholesome gayety which the earl, of whom it might truly be said,

   “A merrier man, never spent an hour’s talk withal,”

knew so well how to scatter around him.  By what magic he did this, no one ever quite found out; but it was done, and especially so on this night of all nights, when, after his long absence, he came back to his own ancestral home, and appeared again among his own neighbors and friends.  They long remembered it—­and him.

At length the last carriage rolled away, and shortly afterward the wind began suddenly to rise and howl wildly round the Castle.  There came on one of those wild winter-storms, common enough in these regions—­ brief, but fierce while they last.