"Well, well," said he, with a very friendly and pleasant smile lighting up his face, "you have come a long way. And are you going to live in the old place now—and leave the farm to your sons? They must be great big fellows by this time, I suppose. And that—what is that you have brought with you? You don't have beasts like that coming about the house at night, do you?"
She tried to speak; but it was only in detached and incoherent sentences—and there was a bewilderment of gladness in the shining eyes with which she gazed on him.
"I was feared, sir, you might not be remembering me—and—and you have not forgotten Ann, after all these years—oh, yes, yes, a long way—and every night I was saying 'Will the young master be remembering Ann?' And the deer's head, sir?—oh, no, there are no deer at all in our part of the country—but—but it was my boy Andrew, he had to go down to Toronto, and he saw the head, and he brought it back, and says he, 'Mother, if you are going away back to Lochgarra, take this head with you, and tell the young master it is a present from the whole of us, and maybe he will hang it up in the hall.'"
"We have no hall to hang it up in now," said he, but quite good-naturedly—for Mary Stanley was standing by, not unnaturally interested. "However, you must come out and see where I am living now—at Heimra Island. You remember Martha?"
"Oh, yes, yes," said the old dame, who had dried her tears now, and was looking most delighted and proud and happy.
"But you have not told me yet what has brought you all the way back to Lochgarra," said he.
She seemed astonished—and even disappointed.
"You cannot tell that, sir? Well, it was just to see yourself—nothing else but that—it was just to see young Donald, that I used to call the lamb of my heart. But that was when you were very young, sir."
Donald Ross laughed.
"Come away, Ann," said he, and he put his hand affectionately on the old dame's shoulder. "You must come out to Heimra Island, and Martha will look after you, after all your travelling. Now let me see; we shan't be getting up anchor for an hour or an hour and a half; but I shall have your things put on board, and in the meanwhile you can go round to the inn and wait for me there. Tell them to give you a room with a good fire in it. And, by the way, you don't want me to call you by your married name, do you?—for to tell you the truth, I don't remember it!"