"Friends of Drumtochty, it would not be right that we should part in silence and no man say what is in every heart. We have buried the remains of one that served this Glen with a devotion that has known no reserve, and a kindliness that never failed, for more than forty years. I have seen many brave men in my day, but no man in the trenches of Sebastopol carried himself more knightly than William MacLure. You will never have heard from his lips what I may tell you to-day, that my father secured for him a valuable post in his younger days, and he preferred to work among his own people; and I wished to do many things for him when he was old, but he would have nothing for himself. He will never be forgotten while one of us lives, and I pray that all doctors everywhere may share his spirit. If it be your pleasure, I shall erect a cross above his grave, and shall ask my old friend and companion Dr. Davidson, your minister, to choose the text to be inscribed." "We thank you, Lord Kilspindie," said the doctor, "for your presence with us in our sorrow and your tribute to the memory of William MacLure, and I choose this for his text: "'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'" Milton was, at that time, held in the bonds of a very bitter theology, and his indignation was stirred by this unqualified eulogium. "No doubt Dr. MacLure hed mony natural virtues, an' he did his wark weel, but it wes a peety he didna mak mair profession o' releegion." "When William MacLure appears before the Judge, Milton," said Lachlan Campbell, who that day spoke his last words in public, and they were in defence of charity, "He will not be asking him about his professions, for the doctor's judgment hass been ready long ago; and it iss a good judgment, and you and I will be happy men if we get the like of it. "It iss written in the Gospel, but it iss William MacLure that will not be expecting it." "What is't, Lachlan?" asked Jamie Soutar, eagerly. The old man, now very feeble, stood in the middle of the road, and his face, once so hard, was softened into a winsome tenderness. "'Come, ye blessed of My Father ... I was sick, and ye visited Me.'" End of Project Gutenberg's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush, by Ian Maclaren