The probationer was very brave and generous, blaming no one, and acknowledging that Tosh would be a more suitable man for Tilliegask, but it was evident he was hardly hit. “It was not to escape the unrest of this life,” he said, “nor for the position, nor even for the sanction of my work; it was for the sake of one who... has waited long to see me an ordained minister. She may not... be spared much longer; my mother is now nearly seventy.” So it was no sweetheart, but his mother of whom he thought. “If I had been elected, I had purposed to start this forenoon and carry the news myself, and I imagined the scene. I never could reach the cottage unseen, for there is a window in the gable which commands the road, so that mother is ever waiting at the garden gate for me. “Do not count me foolish, but I was to pretend that I had just come to visit her for a day, and then ask her how she would like to leave the cottage and live in a manse. “By this time she would jalouse something--'tis her word--but I would tell nothing, only expatiate on the manse and her room in it, and... and... she would suddenly throw her arms round my neck.... Excuse me, sir; I will come down in the evening, if you please.” Before evening he was hurrying down to the cottage, for after all he had to go to his mother, and when he came back next Monday she was dead and buried. “Your sympathy is very grateful,” as we sat together, “and it helps me, but I think my heart is... broken; although I had to live in Edinburgh in order to accomplish my railway journeys, and we only saw one another at intervals, we were all in all to one another.... “There were things passed between us I cannot tell, for it seems to me that a mother's death-bed is a holy place; but she knew that I had lost Tilliegask, and... she was not cast down, as I was for her sake. “'Dinna lose heart, Hiram,' she said, her hand in mine, 'for my faith will be justified; when I gave ye to the Lord the day your father died I was sure, a' through the fecht o' education I was sure, an' when you got your honours I was sure, an' when you got no kirk I was still as sure, and now my eyes are clear, an' I see that God has savit you for a work that hath not entered into my heart,' and she blessed me....” From that day he began to fail, and although he struggled to fulfil preaching engagements, he had at last to give up public work. But he toiled harder than ever at the Semitic languages. “It is not that I am deceiving myself with vain hopes,” he explained to me one day, “for I know full well that I am dying, but it seemeth good that whatsoever talent I have should be cultivated to the end. “The future life is veiled, and speculation is vain, but language must be used, and they who have mastered the ancient roots will be of some service; it is all I can offer, and I must give of my best.”