Mary Robertson she continued to be to the Glen folk,--the lady of her
ancestral manor, now for five years lain under the birch trees yonder by
the church tower that looked out from its clustering firs and birches
on the slope beyond the loch. Five years ago the gentle lady had passed
from them, but like the liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of
the heather and the firs, the aroma of her saintly life still filled the
Glen.

A year after that grief had fallen, Moira, her one daughter, "the bonny
like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine," had somehow slipped
into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide
demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift
which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her
poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless,
doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling
womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a basis of profitable
returns. And this, too, with so little "clash and claver" that her
father only knew that somehow things were more comfortable about the
place, and that there were fewer calls than formerly upon his purse
for the upkeep of the House and home. Indeed, the less appeared Moira's
management, both in the routine of the House and in the care of the
farm, the more peacefully flowed the current of their life. It seriously
annoyed the Captain at intervals when he came upon his daughter
directing operations in barnyard or byre. That her directing meant
anything more than a girlish meddling in matters that were his entire
concern and about which he had already given or was about to give
orders, the Captain never dreamed. That things about the House were
somehow prospering in late years he set down to his own skill and
management and his own knowledge of scientific farming; a knowledge
which, moreover, he delighted to display at the annual dinners of the