Hugh stood and gazed at her in astonishment.  To his more refined ear, there was a strange incongruity between the somewhat coarse dialect in which she spoke, and the things she uttered in it.  Not that he was capable of entering into her feelings, much less of explaining them to her.  He felt that there was something remarkable in them, but attributed both the thoughts themselves and their influence on him, to an uncommon and weird imagination.  As of such origin, however, he was just the one to value them highly.

“Those are very strange ideas,” he said.

“But what can there be about the wood?  The very primroses—­ye brocht me the first this spring yersel’, Mr. Sutherland—­come out at the fit o’ the trees, and look at me as if they said, ’We ken—­we ken a’ aboot it;’ but never a word mair they say.  There’s something by ordinar’ in’t.”

“Do you like no other place besides?” said Hugh, for the sake of saying something.

“Ou ay, mony ane; but nane like this.”

“What kind of place do you like best?”

“I like places wi’ green grass an’ flowers amo’t.”

“You like flowers then?”

“Like them! whiles they gar me greet an’ whiles they gar me lauch; but there’s mair i’ them than that, an’ i’ the wood too.  I canna richtly say my prayers in ony ither place.”

The Scotch dialect, especially to one brought up in the Highlands, was a considerable antidote to the effect of the beauty of what Margaret said.

Suddenly it struck Hugh, that if Margaret were such an admirer of nature, possibly she might enjoy Wordsworth.  He himself was as yet incapable of doing him anything like justice; and, with the arrogance of youth, did not hesitate to smile at the Excursion, picking out an awkward line here and there as especial food for laughter even.  But many of his smaller pieces he enjoyed very heartily, although not thoroughly—­the element of Christian Pantheism, which is their soul, being beyond his comprehension, almost perception, as yet.  So he made up his mind, after a moment’s reflection, that this should be the next author he recommended to his pupil.  He hoped likewise so to end an interview, in which he might otherwise be compelled to confess that he could render Margaret no assistance in her search after the something in the wood; and he was unwilling to say he could not understand her; for a power of universal sympathy was one of those mental gifts which Hugh was most anxious to believe he possessed.

“I will bring you another book to-night,” said he “which I think you will like, and which may perhaps help you to find out what is in the wood.”

He said this smiling, half in playful jest, and without any idea of the degree of likelihood that there was notwithstanding in what he said.  For, certainly, Wordsworth, the high-priest of nature, though perhaps hardly the apostle of nature, was more likely than any other writer to contain something of the secret after which Margaret was searching.  Whether she can find it there, may seem questionable.