“Papa, how we do miss him!” said Helen one day as she walked with her father through the Cairnforth woods.  “Who would have thought it when he first came here only a few years ago?”

“Who would indeed?” said the minister, remembering a certain walk he had taken through these very paths nineteen years before, when he had wondered why providence had sent the poor babe into the world at all, and thought how far, far happier it would have been lying dead on its dead mother’s bosom—­that beautiful young mother, whose placid face upon the white satin pillows of her coffin Mr. Cardross yet vividly recalled; for he saw it often reflected in the living face of the son, whom, happily, she had died without beholding.

“That was a wise saying of King David’s, ’Let me fall into the hands of the Lord, and not into the hands of men,’” mused Mr. Cardross, who had just been hearing from Mr. Mentieth a long story of his perplexities with “those Bruces,” and had also had lately a few domestic dissensions in his own parish, which did quarrel among itself occasionally, and always brought its quarrels to be settled by the minister.  “It is a strange thing, Helen, my dear, what wonderful peace there often is in great misfortunes.  They are quite different from the petty miseries which people make for themselves.”

“I suppose so.  But do you think, papa, that any good will come out of the London journey?”

“I can not tell; still, it was right to try.  You yourself said it was right to try.”

“Yes;” and then, seeing it was done now, the practical, brave Helen stilled her uncertainties and let the matter rest.

No one was surprised that weeks elapsed before there came any tidings of the travelers.  Then Mr. Menteith wrote, announcing their safe arrival in London, which diffused great joy throughout the parish, for of course every body knew whither Lord Cairnforth had gone, and many knew why.  Scarcely a week passed that some of the far-distant tenantry even, who lived on the other side of the peninsula, did not cross the hills, walking many miles for no reason but to ask at the Manse what was the latest news of “our earl.”

But after the first letter there came no farther tidings, and indeed none were expected.  Mr. Menteith had probably returned to Edinburg, and in those days there was no penny post, and nobody indulged in unnecessary correspondence.  Still, sometimes Helen thought, with a sore uneasiness, “If the earl had had good news to tell, he would have surely told it.  He was always so glad to make any body happy.”

The long summer twilights were ended, and one or two equinoctial gales had whipped the waters of Loch Beg into wild “white horses,” yet still Lord Cairnforth did not return.  At last, one Monday night, when Helen and her father were returning from a three days’ absence at the “preachings’—­that is, the half-yearly sacrament—­in a neighboring parish, they saw, when they came to the ferry, the glimmer of lights from the Castle windows on the opposite shore of the loch.