“Lily!” cried Archie, pausing to listen—“Lily!” He grasped a branch of the rowan-tree, and swung himself down into the torrent’s bed. “Lily! Are you here, Lily?”
She listened till the sound of his footsteps died away, and then swung herself down as he had done. Dipping her handkerchief into the water of the burn, she said to herself, as she wiped the tear-stains from her face, “I’ll be all the brighter to-morrow for this summer shower.” And she laughed softly to herself as she followed the sound of her brother’s voice echoing back through the glen.
Chapter Eight.
The Prodigal’s Return.
“I have stayed too late. They’ll be wondering what has kept me,” said Archie to himself, as he saw the firelight gleaming from the cottage-window. “I wonder where Lily can be, that she didn’t come to meet me? I wonder if anything has happened?”
Something had happened. He paused a moment at the door to listen, as a strange voice reached his ear. It was a man’s voice. Going in softly, he saw his aunt in her accustomed seat, and close beside her, with his head bowed down on his hands, sat a stranger. There was a strange look, too, on his aunt’s face, the boy thought, and the tears were running down over her cheeks. Wondering and anxious, he silently approached her.
“Archie, are you come home?” said she, holding out her hand to him as he drew near. “Hugh, this is your uncle’s son. Archie, this is your cousin Hugh come home again.”
With a cry Archie sprang forward—not to take his cousin’s offered hand, but to clasp him round the neck; and, trembling like a leaf, the returned wanderer held him in a close embrace.