The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

I40 The Highland Monthly.
" Mr Greaves, you and T are no longer young. We are
both lonely and in need of the sympathy which friendship
and family love bestows. I do not seek to know what was
your sister's fault ; but you should not keep wrath for ever,
and especially if she and her children need your help."
" Let us talk no more of this," he replied gruffly ;
at my horses."
" look
" It must be explained that he induced me to walk over
his farm, that I might see his system in practical operation.
The horses were worth looking at. There was one bay
pony, especially, which I much admired. Willie Gillies
was passionately fond of .-iding. I thought how he would
enjoy a gallop on the bay pony's back, and, as I too often
speak my thoughts aloud—Tommy, the young scamp,
frequently amused himself with observations on this weak-
ness— I said aloud, " Oh !
Willie, I wish you were here."
Mr Greaves smiled, and asked me who was Willie, and
why I wished his presence.
I told him Willie was my clerk, and impelled by some
inexplicable motive (I have now discovered it was a blind
wish to say something to make the rich farmer-squire for-
give his erring sister), I told him how I became acquainted
with Willie, and everything I knew about him and his
family.
" He must be a fine lad that Willie. I wish I had an
adopted son of that stamp. But what is the chiel's surname."
" Gillies.'^
A rapid change passed over the face of my entertainer
when he asked the next question,
"And where do you say his father was minister?"
I named the parish, and he remained mute ; although
without obtrusively looking at him I felt that he was
labouring in a struggle for mastery between his good and
evil angels. My hope was that something similar in my
story caused him to reflect on the life of his own sister, and
that he was struggling into a reconciliation mood. He