"What a sweet-looking girl Nora grows," said her uncle, addressing his wife. "She daily reminds me more and more of her dear mother when she was the same age, and I only some five years her senior. We two were always great companions, although there was a brother between us—Charlie, you know, who died some years ago in Canada. Ah well! I am glad my own loving-hearted wife yielded to my desire to bring up dear Elenora's children when they were left orphans. The charge has not proved too much for you, Charlotte?"
"Oh no," was the ready response; "the three orphans have brought joy, not sorrow, into our home, I think, Ralph; and our own little ones love them dearly. Nora is a sweet girl; but Ronald has the most character of them all. How I shall miss the noble boy when he leaves us! Eric can hardly fill his place to me yet: he is very heedless; he is the only one who causes me a moment's anxiety. He has not the generous nature of the other two, I fear. Still, he is young, and I may prove wrong in my judgment of him. We need much wisdom, Ralph, from God, rightly to train these children and our own."
"Indeed we do; but, you know, we have the command, If any lack wisdom, let him ask of God.'"
Just then the door opened, and a messenger from the nursery called Mrs. Macleod away.
It was, indeed, a happy home in which the three orphan children of whom we are mostly to write had, shortly after their parents' death, found a warm welcome. Benvourd House, the residence of their dead mother's brother, had also been the home of her own young days; and very grateful did she feel when on her death-bed, her favourite brother, with his young wife's full consent, undertook to bring up the little homeless children, whose father had died in India only one year before.
Seven years had elapsed since then, and the children were growing up quickly in their quiet Highland home, in which three little cousins had been born since the death of Elenora Macintosh.
Ronald, the eldest of the three orphans, was now fifteen years old—a clever, thoughtful lad, only prevented from being too much of a book-worm by his love of outdoor sports, which had rendered him bold and manly. And amid the mountain breezes, he had grown-up a strong, hardy lad, with as gentle and loving a heart for the poor and weak ones of earth as his own mother had possessed.
Nora was right. At the time our story begins, Ronald was seated beside the Wishing-Well, book in hand. But the boy was not reading just then; his heart was somewhat full. On the morrow he was to leave his quiet home to go to a large school in England; and from thence, at the age of seventeen, a cousin, who was the head of a mercantile house in London, had offered to give him a situation in it. He hardly liked the idea. He had a soldier's spirit, and would have chosen his father's profession (who met his early death bravely fighting in an Indian war).
But Ronald had others to think of. He must work for his little sister, whom his mother had left to him as his special charge, and Eric as well. He was thinking of these things as he sat beside the Wishing-Well, and he heaved a sigh as he laid down the spirited account of the early Crusades which he had been reading.
"Ah, well!" he said. "The days of the Crusades are gone. I can no longer join the noble band who sought to free the grave of our Lord from the hands of the Infidel, nor boldly bear the banner of the Cross and fight under it. I wish I could."