Poor Jennie did all the mourning for the lad; his father and brothers were in the midst of a new experiment for making wool water-proof, and pretty Mary Butterworth did not love David as David wished her to love him.  It was Jennie only who hung weeping on his neck and watched him walk proudly and sorrowfully away over the hills into the wide, wide world beyond.

Then for many, many long years no more was heard of “Lile Davie Denton.”  The old schoolmaster died and Christopher followed him.  But the Denton brothers remained together.  However, when men make saving money the sole end of their existence, their life soon becomes as uninteresting as the multiplication table, and people ceased to care about the Denton farm, especially as Jennie married a wealthy squire over the mountains, and left her brothers to work out alone their new devices and economies.

Jennie’s marriage was a happy one, but she did not forget her brother.  There was in Esthwaite Grange a young man who bore his name and who was preparing for a like career.  And often Jennie Esthwaite told to the lads and lasses around her knees the story of their “lile uncle,” whom every one but his own kin had loved, and who had gone away to the Indies and never come back again.  “Lile Davie” was the one bit of romance in Esthwaite Grange.

Jennie’s brothers had never been across the “fells” that divided Denton from Esthwaite; therefore, one morning, twenty-seven years after Davie’s departure, she was astonished to see Matt coming slowly down the Esthwaite side.  But she met him with hearty kindness, and after he had been rested and refreshed he took a letter from his pocket and said, “Jennie, this came from Davie six months syne, but I thought then it would be seeking trouble to answer it.”

“Why, Matt, this letter is directed to me!  How dared you open and keep it?”

“Dared, indeed!  That’s a nice way for a woman to speak to her eldest brother!’ Read it, and then you’ll see why I kept it from you.”

Poor Jennie’s eyes filled fuller at every line.  He was sick and wounded and coming home to die, and wanted to see his old home and friends once more.

“O Matt!  Matt!” she cried; “how cruel, how shameful, not to answer this appeal.”

“Well, I did it for the best; but it seems I have made a mistake.  Sam and I both thought an ailing body dovering round the hearthstone and doorstone was not to be thought of—­and nobody to do a hand’s turn but old Elsie, who is nearly blind—­and Davie never was one to do a decent hand job, let by it was herding sheep, and that it was not like he’d be fit for; so we just agreed to let the matter lie where it was.”

“Oh, it was a cruel shame, Matt.”

“Well, it was a mistake; for yesterday Sam went to Kendall, and there, in the Stramon-gate, he met Tom Philipson, who is just home from India.  And what does Tom say but, ‘Have you seen the general yet?’ and, ‘Great man is Gen. Denton,’ and, ’Is it true that he is going to buy the Derwent estate?’ and, ’Wont the Indian Government miss Gen. Denton!’ Sam wasn’t going to let Tom see how the land lay, and Tom went off saying that Sam had no call to be so pesky proud; that it wasn’t him who had conquered the Mahrattas and taken the Ghiznee Pass.”