The yellow sunlight was merging into
deep orange and crimson, tinging with a wonderful variety of tints the
lower landscape. The rippling water looked as if a sudden cross current
of red wine had come flowing into it, and the little hillocks beyond,
golden with gorse, were steeped in the mellow light.
The children followed their mother and Jean, with awed faces and hushed
voices, along the little gleaming sheep-walk, fringed by sweet wild
thyme and dog violets, with tendrils of deerhorn moss flinging their
arms across the path. At length they came on a little marble slab, by
the side of one of the knolls. The last golden shafts of sunlight were
stealing over its memorial words, and the young eyes read in silence:--
IN MEMORY OF
GEORDIE BAXTER,
Who went to the Fold above on the
7th of August, 185--.
"The Lord is my Shepherd;
I shall not want."
Presently, the silent group heard footsteps behind, and when Grace
glanced round she saw a woman, with two little boys by her side, coming
along the little path towards the headstone. She stopped suddenly when
she saw the strangers, evidently surprised by the unusual presence of
visitors in that unfrequented spot, and, turning down another path, went
away in the opposite direction. "Who is that, Jean?" asked Mrs. Foster;
"surely I have seen the face before."
"Dear heart, do ye not know her? It's Elsie Gray. We dinna think, John
and me, that her bonnie face is much changed; but then we see it every
day," Jean replied, looking fondly after the retreating figure.
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