The dreadful fascination of the sight drew his attention even from Helen herself. He sat gazing at his cousin, the man who had deceived and wronged him, and not him only, but those dearer to him than himself ---the man whom, a day or two ago, he had altogether hated and despised. He dared do neither now. A heavier hand than that of mortal justice was upon his enemy. Whatever Captain Bruce was, whatever he had been, he was now being taken away from all human judgment into the immediate presence of Him who is at once the Judge and the Pardoner of sinners. Awe-struck, the earl sat and watched the young man (for he could not be thirty yet), struck down thus in the prime of his days--carried away into the other world--while he himself, with his frail, flickering taper of a life, remained. Wherefore? At length, in a whisper, he called "Helen!" and she came and knelt beside the earl's chair. "He is fast going," said she. "I see that." "In an hour or two, the doctor said." "Then I will stay, if I may?" "Oh yes." Helen said it quite passively; indeed, her whole appearance as she moved about the room, and then took her seat by her husband's side, indicated one who makes no effort either to express or to restrain grief--who has, in truth, suffered till she can suffer no more. The dying man was not so near death as the doctor had thought, for after a little he fell into what seemed a natural sleep. Helen leant her head against the wall and closed her eyes. But that instant was heard from the inner room a cry, the like of which Lord Cairnforth had never heard before--the sharp, waking cry of a very young infant. In a moment Helen started up--her whole expression changed; and when, after a short disappearance, she re-entered the room with her child, who had dropped contentedly asleep again, nestling to her bosom, she was perfectly transformed. No longer the plain, almost elderly woman; she had in her poor worn face the look--which makes any face young, nay, lovely--the mother's look. Fate had not been altogether cruel to her; it had given her a child. "Isn't he a bonnie bairn?" she whispered, as once again she knelt down by Lord Cairnforth's chair, and brought the little face down so that he could see it and touch it. He did touch it with his feeble fingers-- the small soft cheek--the first baby-cheek he had ever beheld. "It is a bonnie bairn, as you say; God bless it!" which, as she afterward told him, was the first blessing ever breathed over the child. "What is its name:" he asked by-and-by, seeing she expected more notice taken of it. "Alexander Cardross--after my father. My son is a born Scotsman too --an Edinburg laddie. We were coming home, as fast as we could, to Cairnforth. He"--glancing toward the bed--"he wished it."