“Man, Adam, have you forgotten me?” cried Hew Murray with tears in his eyes; and the two boys who had grown up together beside that pleasant water of Fendie were grasping each other’s hands again.
There needed no other salutation. “Man, Adam!” Through their varied, troubled, far-separated course, the two sworn brothers had carried the generous boyish hearts unchanged—and simple as the lads parted, the old men met. “Man, Adam!” there never were superlative endearing words, which carried a stronger warmth of long and old affection than Hew Murray’s boyish greeting, bursting from the honest, joyous, trembling lip that had not spoken it before for thirty years.
“Where have you come from—where have you been? Hew! Hew, what has become of you all this life-time?” exclaimed Adam Graeme. They were holding each other’s hands—looking into each other’s faces—recognizing joyfully the well-remembered youthful features in those subdued ones, over which the mist of age had fallen; but in Hew Murray’s eager grasp, and in the happy, gleaming eyes, whose lashes were so wet, the spirit of the youth was living still.
“He will tell you by and by, Adam,” said the lady. “It is a long story—but have you nothing to say to me?”
And Lucy Murray held out her hands—the soft, white, gentle hands, whose kind touch Adam Graeme remembered so long ago.
“Is it you, Lucy?” said Mossgray. “Are we all real and in the flesh?—is it no dream?”
Hew Murray put his arm through his friend’s—far through, as he had been used to do, when they dreamed together over the old grand poetic city on the breezy Calton.
“Give Lucy your other arm, Adam,” said the familiar genial voice, “and we will tell you all our story.”
Lucy with the white hair took Adam’s arm.
“Have you never been away?—is it all a dream those thirty years?” cried Adam Graeme.