the blank of that disappointment, the cruel mortification of those old hopes, which never find expression in any words? Mrs. Murray, from the household place where she had ruled so long, where she had brought up upon her very life-blood like the pelican, those same commonplace people--where she had succoured the poor, and entertained strangers, and fed from her heart two generations--looked wistfully, half wonderingly at them as they all entered, and sat down round her, to decide what was to be done with her. Something of a divine despair, like that God Himself might have felt when the creation he had pronounced good, turned to evil--but with a more poignant thrill of human anguish in the fact of her own utter powerlessness to move to good or to evil those independent souls which once had seemed all hers, to influence as she would--swept through her like a sudden storm. But to show any outward sign of this was impossible. Theirs now was the upper hand; they were in the height of life, and she was old. “When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not;” she said these words to herself with a piteous patience and submission; but unheard by any soul,--unless, indeed, it was by those sympathisers in Heaven, who hear so much, yet make no sign that we can hear or see. They came in quite cheerfully all of them, full of the many and diversified affairs which, for the moment, they were to make the sacrifice of laying aside to settle the fate of their mother, and held over her body, as it were, a pleasant little family palaver. “The children have gone down the loch for a pic-nic; they would have come in to see Granny, but I said you would have no time for them to-day. The weather is just wonderful for this time of the year, or I never would have allowed such a thing.” “It’s all very well for you town-folk to praise up a good day,” said Mr. Campbell, “which is no doubt pleasant when it comes to them that have no interest in the land--but a kind of an insult to us after all the soft weather that has ruined the corn. What’s the use of one good day except for your pic-nics and nonsense? nothing but to make the handful of wheat sprout the faster. And the glass is down again--We’ll have more rain the morn.” “You’ll find it very dry in the East country, Chairles,” said Mrs. Campbell; “more pleasant for walking, but very stour and troublesome to keep a house clean, and a great want of water. Your sister Marg’ret was aye ill to please about the weather; but after a’ that’s come and gone, I hope she’s no so fanciful now?” “You’ll be setting up a gig soon?” said James Murray, “or, perhaps, you’ve done it already? It’s expensive, but it’s a kind of necessity for a doctor.”