Here he sat himself down by the fireside, drearily, with his elbows on his knees, looking at the fire, silent for the most of his time, and shaking his head despondently when his mother essayed some feeble attempt at consolation—some Scriptural phrase, which had been aired at all the deaths in the family for the last sixty years. ‘I never thought that she would have gone before me,’ crooned the old lady, ‘but the Lord’s ways are wonderful, and His paths past finding out. It’s a sad thing to think that Muriel can’t follow to-morrow. It will be the first time in our family that a daughter has been absent at her mother’s funeral.’ ‘Ah! poor Muriel,’ said the father, hopelessly. ‘_That_ trouble seems harder to bear now. It would have comforted me in my loss if I had had a daughter to take my dead wife’s place; some one to look after the servants and pour my tea out of a morning; some one to sit opposite me at table, and help me off with my coat when I came in of a wet evening.’ ‘There’s Martin,’ said old Mrs. Trevanard, ‘he ought to be a comfort to you.’ ‘Martin’s a good fellow, but he can’t be what a daughter might have been. A daughter would put her arms round my neck, and cling to me, and shed her tears upon my breast; and in trying to comfort her I should almost forget my own sorrow. A daughter could fill her mother’s empty place in the house, which Martin can never do. He’ll be wanting to run away from home, fast enough, you’ll see, now his mother’s gone. She had a great deal more influence over him than I ever had. Who hadn’t she influence over, I wonder? Why, the very cowboys thought more of her than of me. Ah, she was a wonderful woman!’ ‘Yes, Michael,’ answered his mother, with a sigh. ‘She was a good and faithful servant, and in such the Lord is well pleased. She never missed morning and afternoon service, let the weather be what it might on Sundays. She read her Bible diligently, and she did her duty to the best of her knowledge. If ever she was mistaken——’ ‘She never was mistaken,’ interrupted the widower, testily; ‘Bridget was always right. When Martin bought those Kerry cows, and I scolded him for buying such small mean-looking cattle, Bridget stood by him and said she’d warrant they were good milch cows. And so they were. I never knew Bridget out of her reckoning.’ The grandmother sighed. She had been thinking of something wide apart from the sordid cares of farm or homestead. Maurice attended the funeral, which took place on a chilly September afternoon, when autumn’s biting blast swept across the broad moorland, and over the quiet valleys, and stripped the yellowing leaves from the orchard trees. The leaves were falling earlier than usual this year, after the long droughts and heat of the summer.