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p>WHAT'S MINE'S MINE
By George MacDonald
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.
CONTENTS OF VOL. III.
I. AT A HIGH SCHOOL
II. A TERRIBLE DISCOVERY
III. HOW ALISTER TOOK IT
IV. LOVE
V. PASSION AND PATIENCE
VI. LOVE GLOOMING
VII. A GENEROUS DOWRY
VIII. MISTRESS CONAL
IX. THE MARCHES
X. MIDNIGHT
XI. SOMETHING STRANGE
XII. THE POWER OF DARKNESS
XIII. THE NEW STANCE
XIV. THE PEAT-MOSS
XV. A DARING VISIT
XVI. THE FLITTING
XVII. THE NEW VILLAGE
XVIII. A FRIENDLY OFFER
XIX. ANOTHER EXPULSION
XX. ALISTER'S PRINCESS
XXI. THE FAREWELL
CHAPTER I
AT A HIGH SCHOOL.
When Mercy was able to go down to the drawing-room, she found the evenings pass as never evenings passed before; and during the day, although her mother and Christina came often to see her, she had time and quiet for thinking. And think she must; for she found herself in a region of human life so different from any she had hitherto entered, that in no other circumstances would she have been able to recognize even its existence. Everything said or done in it seemed to acknowledge something understood. Life went on with a continuous lean toward something rarely mentioned, plainly uppermost; it embodied a tacit reference of everything to some code so thoroughly recognized that occasion for alluding to it was unfrequent. Its inhabitants appeared to know things which her people did not even suspect. The air of the brothers especially was that of men at their ease yet ready to rise--of men whose loins were girded, alert for an expected call.
Under their influence a new idea of life, and the world, and the relations of men and things, began to grow in the mind of Mercy. There was a dignity, almost grandeur, about the simple life of the cottage, and the relation of its inmates to all they