CHAPTER II.

THE SEARCH


Miss Hume, Grace's aunt, left the management of Kirklands entirely in
the hands of her business agent. Mr. Graham met the tenants, gathered
the rents, arranged the leases, and directed the improvements without
even a nominal interference on her part. And certainly he
conscientiously performed these duties with a view to his client's
interests. It may be wondered that Miss Hume did not take a more
personal interest in her tenants, but various things had contributed to
this state of matters. Indeed, she was now so infirm that it would have
been difficult for her to take any active interest in things around her,
especially as it had not been the habit of her earlier years to do so.

It was her younger sister, Grace's mother, who used to know all the
dwellers in the valley so well that her white pony could calculate the
distance to the pleasant farmyard at which he would get his next
mouthful of crisp corn; or the muirland cottage, with its delicious bit
of turf, where he would presently graze, as he waited for his young
mistress, while she talked to the inmates. But if the little girl with
her white pony could have come back again to Kirklands, they would have
missed many a familiar face, and searched in vain for many a cottage.
The pleasant little thatched dwellings, with velvety tufts of moss
studding the roof, and pretty creepers climbing till they mingled with