The Orphans of Glen Elder

by Margaret M. Robertson

Lilias’s greeting was very quiet.

“I am glad you are come home again, Cousin Hugh,” said she, as she gave him her hand; and then she looked at her aunt.

“God has been better to me than my fears. He has given me the desire of my heart—blessed be His name!” whispered Mrs Blair, as Lilias bent over her.

All that it is needful to give here of Hugh Blair’s story may be given in a few words. He had not enlisted as a soldier, as had been at first believed. But, in an hour of great misery and shame, he had gone away from home, leaving behind him debt and dishonour, fully resolved never to set foot in his native land again till he had retrieved his fortunes and redeemed his good name.

To redeem one’s good name is easily resolved upon, but not so easily accomplished. He took with him, to the faraway land to which he had exiled himself, the same hatred of restraint, the same love of sinful pleasures, that had been his bane at home. It is true he left the companions who had led him astray and encouraged him in his foolish course; but, alas! there are in all lands evil-doers enough to hinder the well-doing of those who have need to mend their ways. He sinned much, and suffered much, before he found a foothold for himself in the land of strangers.

Many a mother’s prayers have followed a son into just such scenes of vice and misery as he passed through before God’s messenger, in the shape of sore sickness, found him. Alone in a strange land, he lay for weeks dependent on the unwilling charity of strangers. The horrors of that fearful illness, the dreariness of that slow convalescence, could not be told. Helpless, homeless, friendless, with no memories of the past which his follies had not embittered, no hopes for the future which he dared to cherish, it was no wonder that he stood on the brink of despair.

But he was not forsaken utterly. When he was ready to perish, a countryman of his own found him, and, for his country’s sake, befriended him. He took him from the poisoned air of a tropical city away to the country, amid whose hills and slopes reigns perpetual spring; and here, under the influences of a well-ordered home, he regained health both of body and of mind, and found also in his countryman and benefactor a firm and faithful friend.

Now, indeed, he began life anew. Bound by many ties of gratitude to his employer and friend, he strove to do his duty, and to honour the trust reposed in him; and he did not strive in vain. During the years that followed, he became known as an honourable and a successful man; and when at last, partly for purposes of business and partly with a view to the re-establishment of his health, he determined to return home for a time, he was comparatively a man of means.

He had all this time been doing one wrong and foolish thing, however. He had kept silence towards his mother. He had not forgotten her. He made many a plan, and dreamed many a dream, of the time when, with all stains wiped from his name and his life, he would return to make her forget all that was painful in the past. He had never thought of her all these years but as the honoured and prosperous mistress of Glen Elder. It had never come into his mind that, amid the chances and changes of life, she might have to leave the place which had been the home of her youth and her middle age.

When he returned, to find a stranger in his mother’s place, it was a terrible shock. All that he could learn concerning her was that she had had no choice but to give up the farm, and that on leaving it she had found a humble but welcome shelter in a neighbouring county; but whether she was there still, or whether she was even alive, they could not tell him.