It was the last words which ever passed ’Lina’s lips, “Forgive, forgive,” and Hugh, with his ear close to the lips, heard the faint murmur even after the hands had fallen from his neck where, in the last struggle, they had been clasped, and after the look which comes but once to all had settled on her face. That was the last of ’Lina, with that cry for pardon she passed away, and though it was but a death-bed repentance, and she, the departed, had much need for pardon, Alice clung to it as to a ray of hope, knowing how tender and full of compassion was the blessed Saviour, even to those who turn not to him until the river of death is bearing them away. Very gently Hugh laid the dead girl back upon the pillow, and leaving one kiss on her white forehead, hurried away to his own room, where, unseen by mortal eye, he could ask for knowledge to give himself to the God who had come so near to them. The next day was appointed for the funeral, and just as the sun was setting, a long procession wound across the fields, and out to the hillside, where the Spring Bank dead were buried, and where they laid ’Lina to rest, forgetting all her faults, and speaking only kindly words of her as they went slowly back to the house, from which she had gone forever. CHAPTER XXXV. JOINING THE ARMY. Ten days after the burial, there came three letters to Spring Bank, one to Hugh, from Murdoch, as he now chose to be called, saying that though he had sought and was still searching for the missing Adah, he could only trace her, and that but vaguely, to the Greenbush depot, where he lost sight of her entirely, no one after that having seen a person bearing the least resemblance to her. After a consultation with the doctor, he had advertised for her, and he enclosed a copy of the advertisement, as it appeared in the different papers of Boston, Albany, and New York. “If A—— H—— will let her whereabouts be known to her friends, she will hear of something to her advantage.” This was the purport of Murdoch’s letter, if we except a kind enquiry after _’Lina_, of whose death he had not heard. The second, for Alice, was from Anna Richards, who having heard of ’Lina’s decease, spoke kindly of the unfortunate girl, and then wrote. “I have great hopes of my erring brother, now that I know how his whole heart goes out towards his beautiful boy, our darling Willie. I wish poor, dear Lily could have seen him when, on his arrival at Terrace Hill, he knelt by the crib of his sleeping child, waking him at once, and hugging him to his bosom, while his tears dropped like rain. I am sure she would have chosen to be his wife, for her own sake as well as Willie’s.