The news of MacFarlane's expected departure soon became known in the village.

There were not many people to say good-by, the inhabitants having seen but little of the engineer and still less of his daughter, except as she flew past, in a mad gallop, on her brown mare, her hair sometimes down her back.

The pastor of the new church came, however, to express his regrets, and to thank Mr.MacFarlane for his interest in the church building.

He also took occasion to say many complimentary things about Garry, extolling him for the wonderful manner in which that brilliant young architect had kept within the sum set apart by the trustees for its construction, and for the skill with which the work was being done, adding that as a slight reward for such devotion the church trustees had made Mr.Minott treasurer of the building fund, believing that in this way all disputes could the better be avoided,--one of some importance having already arisen (here the reverend gentleman lowered his voice) in which Mr.McGowan, he was sorry to say, who was building the masonry, had attempted an overcharge which only Mr.Minott's watchful eye could have detected, adding, with a glance over his shoulder, that the collapse of the embankment had undermined the contractor's reputation quite as much as the freshet had his culvert, at which MacFarlane smiled but made no reply.
Corinne also came to express her regrets, bringing with her a scrap of an infant in a teetering baby carriage, the whole presided over by a nurse in a blue dress, white cap, and white apron, the ends reaching to her feet: not the Corinne, the Scribe is pained to say, who, in the old days would twist her head and stamp her little feet and have her way in everything.

But a woman terribly shrunken, with deep lines in her face and under her eyes.