"I cannot, you know, William; I lent him to Ellen Chauncey."
"Lent him! that's a good one. For how long?"
Ellen smiled, though sighing inwardly to see how very much narrowed was her prospect of ever mounting him again. She did not care to explain herself to those around her. Still, at the very bottom of her heart lay two thoughts, in which her hope refuged itself. One was a peculiar assurance that whatever her brother pleased, nothing could hinder him from accomplishing; the other, a like confidence that it would not please him to leave his little sister unlooked after. But all began to grow misty, and it seemed now as if Scotland must henceforth be the limit of her horizon.
Leaving their children at a relation's house, Major and Mrs. Gillespie accompanied her to the north. They travelled post, and arriving in the evening at Edinburgh, put up at a hotel in Princes-street. It was agreed that Ellen should not seek her new home till the morrow; she should eat one more supper and breakfast with her old friends, and have a night's rest first. She was very glad of it. The Major and Mrs. Gillespie were enchanted with the noble view from their parlour windows; while they were eagerly conversing together, Ellen sat alone at the other window, looking out upon the curious Old Town. There was all the fascination of novelty and beauty about that singular picturesque mass of buildings, in its sober colouring, growing more sober as the twilight fell; and just before outlines were lost in the dusk, lights began feebly to twinkle here and there, and grew brighter and more as the night came on, till their brilliant multitude were all that could be seen, where the curious jumble of chimneys and house- tops and crooked ways had shown a little before. Ellen sat watching this lighting up of the Old Town, feeling strangely that she was in the midst of new scenes, indeed, entering upon a new stage of life; and having some difficulty to persuade herself that she was really Ellen Montgomery. The scene of extreme beauty before her seemed rather to increase the confusion and sadness of her mind. Happily, joyfully, Ellen remembered, as she sat gazing over the darkening city and its brightening lights, that there was One near her who could not change; that Scotland was no remove from him; that His providence as well as His heaven was over her there; that there, not less than in America, she was His child. She rejoiced, as she sat in her dusky window, over his words of assurance, "I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine;" and she looked up into the clear sky (that at least was home like) in tearful thankfulness, and with earnest prayer that she might be kept from evil. Ellen guessed she might have special need to offer that prayer. And as again her eye wandered over the singular bright spectacle, that kept reminding her she was a stranger in a strange place, her heart joyfully leaned upon another loved sentence "This God is our God for ever and ever, He will be our guide even unto death."
She was called from her window to supper.
"Why, how well you look!" said Mrs. Gillespie; "I expected you would have been half tired to death. Doesn't she look well?"
"As if she was neither tired, hungry, nor sleepy," said Major
Gillespie kindly; "and yet she must be all three."
Ellen was all three. But she had the rest of a quiet mind.
In the same quiet mind, a little fluttered and anxious now, she set out in the carriage the next morning with her kind friends to No. , George-street. It was their intention, after leaving her, to go straight on to England. They were in a hurry to be there; and Mrs. Gillespie judged that the presence of a stranger at the meeting between Ellen and her relations would be desired by none of the parties. But when they reached the house, they found the family were not at home; they were in the country, at their place on the Tyne. The direction was obtained, and the horses' heads turned that way. After a drive of some length, through what kind of a country Ellen could hardly have told, they arrived at the place.
It was beautifully situated; and through well-kept grounds they drove up to a large, rather old-fashioned, substantial- looking house. "The ladies were at home;" and that ascertained, Ellen took a kind leave of Mrs. Gillespie, shook hands with the Major at the door, and was left alone, for the second time in her life, to make her acquaintance with new and untried friends. She stood for one second looking after the retreating carriage one swift thought went to her adopted father and brother far away one to her Friend in heaven and Ellen quietly turned to the servant and asked for Mrs. Lindsay.