"I think he must be taking to mining work, up on the 'Old Man,'" * said Alice; "he goes that way so very often."
* "Coniston Old Man," the name of a mountain.
"Does not he tell you what he is about, when he leaves you?" inquired Mark, anxiously.
"Nae, nae; not so very often now," was the mother's reply; "young men like to think they are their own masters. He says he doesn't like to be watched and followed about."
"He always used to like me to set him off as far as the top of Green Gap in all weathers," said Alice, mournfully; "but he thinks I can't keep up with him now, he says, and yet I can run all the way there and back faster than old Chance."
"Does Chance go with his master?"
"No; he will not let him go either, though the dear old fellow whines after him."
"There is some mystery here," thought the schoolmaster. "Heaven grant that the widow's son, the son of many prayers, may not be turning at last into the 'broad path.'"
"Perhaps it's only Bella Hartley, after all," exclaimed Alice, with a sudden flush of illumination.
"Nae, I fear not," the widow replied. "Bella is a good girl, and he needn't be ashamed to visit her; he knows he would have his mother's blessing upon the head of that any day," though her brimming eyes, as she looked round tenderly on the old place, showed how much it would cost her to leave the ancestral Yews, and abdicate her quiet throne in favor of a youthful successor.