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.

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