The old man read sternly, concentratedly on; the young one looked at the purple mountain-heads.

Elspeth came around the tree.
"Grandfather, dinner is ready .-- Robin! we didn't know that you were here--" "I went the way around to speak with the laird.

Then I thought, 'I will eat at White Farm--'" "You're welcome!--Grandfather, let me take the Book." "No," said the old man, and bore it himself withindoors.

Spare and unbent of frame, threescore and ten and five, and able yet at the plow-stilts, rigid of will, servant to the darker Calvinism, starving where he might human pride and human affections, and yet with much of both to starve, he moved and spoke with slow authority, looked a patriarch and ruled his holding.

When presently he came to table in the clean, sanded room with the sunlight on the wall and floor, and when, standing, he said the long, the earnest grace, it might have been taken that here, in the Scotch farm-house, was at least a minor prophet.