The simple funeral was over; the last look had been taken, and little
Alice McLane was hidden from the weeping eyes that still turned toward
her lowly resting-place, as if yet unwilling to leave her alone beneath
that cold, cold sod.
Donald and Margaret McLane had been very happy until now—too happy
perhaps. They had loved each other in early years, and when Donald had
earned enough by his own honest labor to purchase the cottage on
Burnside Moor, they were married without a shadow on their young,
hopeful hearts.
Margaret was a careful housewife, and Donald had ever a warm welcome and
comfortable home when, wearied with his daily toil, he came back to her
whom he had promised to love and cherish; and when little Alice came to
gladden the young mother’s lonely hours while he was away, sunshine
reigned in the household. In all their happiness they never forgot who
gave them all their blessings, and daily was their morning and evening
sacrifice of praise sent up to their Heavenly Father in confiding and
child-like simplicity.
A cherished flower was Ally McLane, with her bright blue eyes sparkling
with joy and affection, her round, dimpled, rosy cheeks, and baby tones,
so sweet to a parent’s ear; her mother’s sunny spirit seemed hers from
her very birth until the heavy hand of sickness came down to hush those
happy notes, and dim the light of health and joyousness that ever danced
around her.
Perhaps she was too fondly loved; perhaps their hearts clung with too
much of idolatry to their only one; and a watchful Father saw that the
ties must be loosened. While yet her lisping tones seemed ringing in
their ears; while yet the flush of health lingered on her cheek, the
dart of the spoiler came, and with scarce a pang of suffering to rend
the mother’s heart with deeper anguish, little Ally was taken away from
the ill to come.
Overwhelming as was the blow, a mitigation was sent with it. The
stranger babe thus thrown upon Margaret’s tenderness, proved a solace
which nothing else could have afforded, and in the cares attendant upon
her new charge, the dreary sense of loneliness, following the loss of a
loved one, was robbed of half its power.
Many were the wondering surmises of Donald and his wife, in reference to
the manner in which the babe had been thus given to them. The dark
mantle in which it had been closely enfolded, had first attracted
Donald’s attention amid the snow-drifts, for the little forsaken one was
already wrapped in that fatal slumber which, if not soon broken, knows
no waking—and the young man’s heart was melted with kindly sympathy as
he thought of his own darling, so he raised the light burden from its
soft but dangerous resting-place, bore it to gentle and tender
hands—and as days, and weeks, and months wore away, no one appearing to
claim the lost one, closer and closer their hearts were wound about her,
till their love seemed even as that they had borne their _own_ angel
Ally—as they called her.
Sometimes Margaret would almost forget that her second Ally was not,
indeed, the very same as that one they had laid with such
heart-yearnings beneath the snow-clad turf; and yet the two were very
unlike. The face of the stranger was full of earnest thought. Her large,
dark, liquid eyes, so full of dreamy tenderness, beamed with almost
spiritual beauty; and a hasty word would bring the tears to her eyes,
the warm blush to her cheek, and a strange imploring expression over her
whole countenance; whereas her elder namesake was ever a joyous child,
light and graceful, full of the heedlessness so natural to her tender
age—and few things there were that had power to dim her sunny spirit.
Year after year sped on unmarked, save by the introduction of one little
stranger after another into the once lonely household of Donald McLane.
Alice, their eldest and loveliest, had ripened gradually from the
beautiful child, their pet and plaything, to the gentle, thoughtful girl
of sixteen, watching with unwearied care the slightest wish of her
parents, (for she knew not that they were otherwise,) and striving by
every means in her power to lighten their burdens. The secret of her
history had been carefully kept from her as well as the fair-haired,
happy flock around them; for why should they sadden a life so unshadowed
as hers, with thoughts that must bring suffering to her loving nature?
The promise of rare beauty which her infancy had held out was more than
realized. There was a spirituality about those dark-blue eyes, in every
graceful movement—a native ease and sweetness of manner so unusual
among the classes in which she moved—so unlike the frank, noisy ways
and ruddy countenances of her younger brothers and sisters, that
Margaret often gazed upon her with a wondering sigh and a trembling of
heart, she could not tell why. Alice had been reared with more than
maternal tenderness—a fond yearning over her deserted helplessness—a
sympathy for those who must have mourned the loss of such a child,
together with her own irresistible winningness, had led Margaret
unconsciously to indulge the child of her adoption even more than the
members of her own little flock; but Ally was one of those rare natures
in whom indulgence only brings forth warmer, purer feelings of love and
gratitude, and even from babyhood, as Margaret would often say, she
seemed like an angel sent down to them from Heaven.
Sweet Alice McLane had not arrived at the age of sixteen without
admirers. Lonely as was the situation of the cottage, many had been
attracted thither by the fame of such a jewel. But there was a quiet
dignity and purity about the gentle girl that repulsed the most
presuming; and Ally was still, child-like, happy in her home, without a
wish to leave it, at least so far as was known to her own heart.
There was, indeed, one, who had been a play-fellow from childhood, being
the son of their only neighbor within many miles, who was ever a welcome
guest at the cottage, beneath whose glance her own never drooped, nor
the painful blush rose to her transparent cheek—and why was it? Because
Dugald Lindsay had never spoken of the trembling hopes that lay nestling
at his heart, though they had wandered together for hours over the
hills, or sat side by side before the bright fire, in the winter
evenings, while he entertained them with merry tales; and though Ally
loved him dearly, yet it was with the pure, happy love of a sister. So
they lived from day to day, unconscious of the cloud that was gathering
over the future happiness of one, and the brightest hopes of the other.