“Then let me see them, Martha,” said Harry, faintly; “let me see them all once again. You will be better without me, and I will be better away. Oh God! my God! I have lost a life.” “But not a soul, Harry--not a soul,” cried Martha, bending down her head, to kiss with burning vehemence the hand on which her tears fell now like hail-drops. “First look up, Harry, my son! my son!--and there is another life!” And the dim eyes turned upward to the roof--to the human mortal screen built between him and the sky; and saw, not the heavens opened, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, but only a household of weeping women, half frantic with love and eagerness, crying aloud for him before the everlasting throne, where mercy sits and judgment; and a blank numbness was on Harry’s soul. He could not throw himself before this footstool, and ask with his last breath for that deliverance which comes from Him who never thrust one empty away. Sleep was upon him, and he craved repose; he trusted to them who interceded--he leaned with faint consciousness upon their supplications; but for himself he could ask nothing--his heart was voiceless, apathetic, asleep. “Pray for me, Martha,” said Harry, faintly. For this was all his hope. Pray for him! When was it, working or resting, that Martha forgot thus to pray? “And gather them all,” said Harry--“gather them all in here, that I may see them before I die.” He said the words with a faint, mournful pathos. He was not rebellious to his doom--poor Harry! but it seemed to him that he was sinking into some pensive, gentle rest. This was how the visible death, drawing near, disclosed itself, in the midst of his great pain, to his heart. And Martha called them in, one by one--Rose, Lettie, Katie Calder, little Harry, and the infant boy. You would have thought, to hear him speak, that this dying man was passing away into the heaven which he already knew for home, and that there interposed no obscuring cloud between him and the sky; or that this suffering of death consciously made up for all the evil that had gone before--for neither remorse nor terror overshadowed Harry, nor did he speak of faith. Poor Harry! this benumbed and quiet peace seemed all he desired. And when he had bidden them farewell, gently, faintly, without any violence of emotion--with a perfect calm and submission, and what people call resignation to the will of God--Harry laid himself down again to die. But his head had scarcely fallen back again upon the pillow, when he started violently--a start which wrung from him a half scream of pain. “Send for Lindsay, Martha!--send for Robertson, in Stirling! Any one--any one you can get most easily!--at once, before I die!” Without hesitation, Martha went to obey his order; and John, who was swift and ready, was in the saddle in a very few minutes, galloping to Stirling for a lawyer.