"Doctor, is this you?" he said; "this is terrible kind o' ye. But it's a cauld nicht for you to be oot o' your bed so late—and you wi' a hoast!" "Wheesht, Alick!" said the doctor. And said no more for a little. For, like every one else, he loved the soft-hearted giant. Then Alick beckoned the station master to him from the door of the left-luggage office, where he stood nervously clasping and unclasping his hands. The station master came and bent his head. "The boat train," whispered Muckle Alick, "ye'll hae to enter her in the shedule five meenites late. But ye can say that she passed Netherby wi' the signals standing at clear." He was silent a moment. Then he looked up again. "Mind ye, there's to be nocht said aboot it in the papers. You'll see to that, will ye no? It's my wish. An' if the company likes to do aught, it'll aye be a help to Mirren." There was a sound of sobbing at the door, and the station master shoved the youngest porter out on the platform with his foot. "Has—ony—body gaen to tell Mirren?" asked Alick in a little. The doctor nodded. He had, in fact, sent his own coachman to Sandyknowes with a gig. "Puir Mirren," said Alick again, "I'm some dootsome that she'll tak' this hard. She was na looking for it, like." He looked about apologetically again. "She was that sair set on me, ye see—maybe wi' us haein' nae bairns, ye ken." He was silent a little while, and then he said, more brightly, "There's three comed noo, though. Maybe they'll be a blessin' to her. The Lord sent them to her, I'm thinkin'. He wad ken o' this aforehand, nae doot!" Suddenly he held up his hand, and there was a light shining like a lamp in his eyes. "Hearken! that's the whistle!" he cried. "Are the signals clear?" There was no train in the station nor near it. Muckle Alick went on. He lifted his head and looked through the open door as one looks ahead under his hand when the sun is strong. "I can see the distant signal. It is standing at clear!" he said, and sank back. And thus the soul of Muckle Alick passed out of the station—with the distant signal standing at clear. They brought the little wife in to him a quarter of an hour after. Already her face seemed to have shrunk to half its size and was paler than Alick's own. The doctor had him wrapped delicately and reverently in the station master's wife's fairest linen. The face was untouched and beautiful, and as composed as it was on Sacrament Sabbaths when he carried in the elements at the head of the session, as it is the custom for the elders to do in the Cameronian Kirk. His wife went up to him quietly and laid her hand on his broad white brow. "My man—my ain man!" she said. And she bent down and touched it, not with her lips but with her cheek. She looked up at the station master's wife. "He aye liked me to do that!" she said, smiling a little, as it were, bashfully.