“Look at me again,” said Lucy Murray with a smile. “No—there are things in those thirty years too precious to part with. I think you have not seen my son.”
“Your son, Lucy?—is it my Lily’s Hew?” asked Mossgray.
“Lucy’s Hew—our representative,” said Hew Murray, “was it not a strange chance, Adam—if we may speak of chances—which brought our boy and I together?”
“I am bewildered, overpowered,” said Mossgray. “Do you forget, Hew, that I know nothing?—that this morning I only clung to the hope that you were living at all as to a fantastic dream—that it is thirty years since I gave up the sober expectation of finding you again?—where have you been?—why have you kept us in this suspense? How is it that we have never heard of you, Hew Murray?”
Hew Murray grasped his friend’s arm tightly in his own.
“Did you ever think the fault was mine, Adam?—but who is this?”
The little old woman, the housekeeper of Murrayshaugh, came quickly round the gable of the house. They were standing in front of it—and their voices had startled her.
“Who is it?” Lucy Murray looked at her, with some anxiety. “I think it must be Isabell Brown.”
Very suspiciously Eesabell returned the scrutiny. The dignified, gentle, aged lady with her serene face and silver hair brought some singular thrill of recognition to the old woman. She thought she had seen the face before.
“I thought it was only gangrel folk. If I had kent it was you, Mossgray, I wadna have disturbed you; but maybe the lady and the gentleman wad like to see the hoose.”