After a while the rest of the family came in one by one—Alick and Cuthbert, Lucy and Laura, and the servants, Mrs. Piggott, and Prissy, and Jane; but when the silence was thus broken, the child grew restless, and then Heather motioned them to go—all save Agnes, and Bessie, who, crouched up in a dark corner, escaped observation. Time passed by, and still there came no tidings of Arthur. Once again Bessie spoke to Agnes, and again Agnes went softly downstairs; when she returned, she whispered that Alick was gone to fetch his brother. With her anxious eyes Heather followed every movement of the pair, and at length she asked Bessie—“Is it so near?” A silent pressure of her hand was Bessie’s only answer. “Would you send some one for Mr. Henry?” the poor mother whispered. “My darling, what good can he do?” Bessie inquired; but Cuthbert was despatched for him, nevertheless. Before many minutes more, however, had elapsed, the child began to move from side to side, and talk wanderingly. She moaned gently, and tried to raise herself in bed. Agnes put her arm behind the pillow, and lifted her a little. Involuntarily Heather and Bessie stood up, as though they heard and felt something approaching, and the former murmured in the very extremity of her anguish, “My child—my child!” “Don’t, Heather—don’t?” Bessie said, in an agony of entreaty. At sound of her voice, Lally opened her eyes wide and looked on the speaker with an expression of recognition. Almost immediately her moaning ceased, her restlessness subsided; there came a glimmer into her face of remembrance, and a smile—a very ghost of the old whimsical smile—played about her lips as she stretched out her little arms and said,— “Bessie carry me down among the blackberries, and cover me with leaves?” Oh Lord! in the days when that was their pastime, who would have dreamed of so pitiful an ending to the short story! For a moment, for her—for the child—no doubt the chamber was flooded with golden sunbeams—without question she saw the landscape lying still and tranquil in the clear, calm, bright light of those summer evenings which had been so happy and so glad. She beheld the trees gently waving their branches in the soft breeze; she heard the light stirring of the wind amongst the foliage; she saw the lawn sloping away to the Hollow, the sheep dotting the fields beyond; she was in her home—her own very home—as she had often called it; the past was present with her once again, and Bessie stood beside her on the smooth green turf.