Morag could date this happy change in her life from that eventful evening in the fir-wood, and she often thought that, whatever the old quarrel had been, the healing of it had proved a very blessed thing for all of them.
Sometimes Morag overheard Kirsty talking to her father in low, earnest tones, as he stood beside her, listening quietly, and more than once she caught the name of Kirsty's Lord and Master mingling with their talk; and then the little girl's heart was filled with gladness. She never yet had the courage to tell her father about that new Life which she had been finding during these autumn days; but she often longed to do so, and was only prevented by her extreme shyness and reserve. She felt very anxious that her father should come to know and love that unseen, but real Friend, who had been the light of Kirsty's lonely home for so many years, and whom she was now learning to know and love.
Occasionally, when her father and Kirsty were engaged in these conversations, Morag would start with Kenneth on an expedition to some of their moorland haunts, to introduce them to the stranger lad. They often wandered into the little graveyard on the hillside, and stood silently beside the fresh-laid turf, while Morag tried to recall the face of the quiet sleeper below; and Kenneth's thoughts went slipping back to the time when he played at his mother's knee, a merry little boy.
It was rather a grief of mind to Kirsty that she never could induce her grandson to talk of the past, nor to give any chronicle of his former life, which she fain would have heard; but she was both wise and kind, and did not seek to elicit confidences which were not freely bestowed, hoping that the time would come when they might be voluntarily given.
But, sometimes, on the way home from these visits to the little graveyard, Kenneth would talk to the quiet Morag as he never had done to Kirsty. And as he told of his past chequered life, the eyes of the little maiden were filled with wonder and pity at the strange experiences through which her boy-friend had passed in the world beyond the mountains.
Kenneth was daily gaining in vigor and manliness. The bracing mountain air seemed to put new life and strength into him; and in Kirsty's comfortable dwelling he had parted with those wearing anxieties which had so long darkened his young life,—though with a darkening that had not been evil.
Kirsty was very anxious that her grandson should at once choose a trade and begin to work. She dreaded idleness for him, above all things, and was somewhat dismayed to find his love for mountain roamings, and to notice his intense enjoyment in a day with the keeper at the moors. The boy little knew what pain it gave to his grandmother when one day that they were talking about his future work in life he frankly acknowledged that he should like nothing half so well as to be a gamekeeper like Dingwall.
But seventeen years of growing trust in the wise love and gracious leading of her Heavenly Father enabled her to commit the boy to His care, and to bid him go and prosper in the path of life which he had chosen.