Lord Cairnforth had never answered her letter--he could not, without being a complete hypocrite; and she had not written again. He did not expect it--scarcely wished it--and yet the blank was sore. More and more he withdrew from all but necessary associations, shutting himself up in the Castle for weeks together--neither reading, nor talking much to any one, but sitting quite still--he always sat quite still--by the fireside in his little chair. He felt creeping over him that deadness to external things which makes pain itself seem comparatively almost sweet. Once he was heard to say, looking wistfully at Mrs. Campbell, who had been telling him with many tears, of a "freend o' hers" who had just died down at the clachan, "Nurse, I wish I could greet like you." The first thing which broke up in his heart this bitter, blighting frost was, as so often happens, the sharp-edged blow of a new trouble. He had not been at the Manse for two or three weeks, and had not even heard of the family for several days, when, looking up from his seat in church, he was startled by the apparition of an unfamiliar face in the pulpit--a voluble, flowery-tongued, foolish young assistant, evidently caught haphazard to fill the place which Mr. Cardross, during a long term of years, had never vacated, except at communion seasons. It gave his faithful friend and pupil a sensation almost of pain to see any new figure there, and not the dear old minister's, with his long white hair, his earnest manner, and his simple, short sermon. Shorter and simpler the older he grew, till he often declared he should end by preaching like the beloved apostle John, who, tradition says, in his latter days, did nothing but repeat, over and over again, to all around him, his one exhortation--he, the disciple whom Jesus loved-- "Little children, love one another." On inquiry after service, the earl found that Mr. Cardross had been ailing all week, and had had on Saturday to procure in haste this substitute. But, on going to the Manse, the earl found him much as usual, only complaining of a numbness in his arm. "And," he said, with a composure very different from his usual nervousness about the slightest ailment, "Now I remember, my mother died of paralysis. I wish Helen would come home." "Shall she be sent for?" suggested Lord Cairnforth. "Oh no--not the least necessity. Besides, she says she is coming." "She has long said that." "But now she is determined to make the strongest effort to be with us at the New Year. Read her letter--it came yesterday; a week later than usual. I should have sent it up to the Castle, for it troubled me a little, especially the postscript; can you make it out? part of it is under the seal. It is in answer to what I told her of Duncan; he was always her pet, you know. How she used to carry him about the garden, even when he grew quite a big boy! Poor Helen!"