For a moment after saying these words, he maintained his position: one hand pointing upwards, while his face, on whose features death was visible, beat heavily towards the earth. Then, stiffly, he sank back; his wife received his head in her lap. He was already dead: and, indeed, his spirit seemed to have returned to its human clay, in obedience to the wife's summons, only to utter those ambiguous sentences, and then to finally depart. But, ambiguous or not, they had answered their purpose; they had planted hope, like a seed, in the very midst of the bereaved woman's despair. He had spoken to her of a treasure above--a treasure in Heaven; and had bade her seek it there. But if he knew of a treasure in Heaven, it must needs be a treasure which he himself had laid up there: and thither, consequently, he must himself have gone. So reasoned Lady Kildhurm; and she forbore to fling away her cross, or scatter the leaves of the Holy Book to the winds. In her shaken and now distempered mind, she beheld a vision of a long vigil of prayer and sanctity, and at the end a death which would be blessed, because it would unite her once more to him. She drew the lifeless body to the foot of the Oak, and seated there, resting against the weather-blackened bole, she waited for the morning. The morning dawned early and pure, with a sky like banks of wild roses and primroses, and breezes cool and sweet breathing from them. The facile sea translated these fragrant glories into deeper-toned but scarce less enchanting beauty; and the earth sparkled with freshness. But Kildhurm's Oak, standing in the midst of so much loveliness, did not mingle with it, but rather seemed to hold darkly and grimly aloof from it, as if conscious of a spirit altogether at variance with the gentler influences of creation. It stretched its branches above the group of lifeless and living humanity huddled beneath it, with an air of sardonic protection. 'Behold my handiwork!' it appeared to say, 'and sweeten it with the graces of the morning if you can!' When Mrs. Chepstow and the old gardener and the boy, Philip, first came upon the two, they thought that both were dead. But as they drew near, they perceived that the woman's eyes were open and seeing, though there was a wild and unsettled expression in them. Nor did she answer when her sister or the old man addressed her; she only whispered to herself, and then bent over and whispered again in the dead man's ear, and smiled. But when her little son Philip spoke to her in his childish tones, some vestige of motherly memories glimmered in her haggard face; and presently she beckoned him to her. 'There, my son,' she said in solemn tones, pointing upwards with her finger; 'there is treasure! seek for it!' 'Where, mamma?' demanded the little fellow. 'In the Oak?' Lady Kildhurm smiled drearily, and relapsed into silence.