It was December when Major Steele arrived at Inchbracken. The ground was powdered with early snow, and the higher hilltops looked solidly white and alpine. The sharp air and the movement had stirred his torpid blood into some appearance of animation, but as the excitement of arrival wore off, he relapsed into wan despondency, and was indeed a melancholy object. The two older men from the first gave up the case in reverent despair. What had there ever been in their most comfortable but burdensome lives, to entitle them to intrude their ignorant sympathy on the unparalleled tragedy of this man's sore bereavement? Like Job's three friends, they would have sat by him without speaking for three days and three nights, with eyes fixed sorrowfully on the carpet, had human life been still as of old, a majestic but monotonous sequence extending over centuries; but in its modern abbreviated form, with so many things to attend to in the brief threescore and ten, that was impossible. They sighed and looked gloomy when they found themselves near him, and then escaped to some other quarter of the house with all decent speed. It was on Kenneth, as old friend and special host, that the full duty of condolence devolved. He led his friend to the smoking-room where they could sit together by the hour in silent amity, watching the blue smokerings widen and disappear, companionable to each other's sight, yet leaving the mind at rest from disturbing talk. Fearing to touch unwisely on the open wound, Kenneth did not venture on any allusion to his friend's bereavement. Mary's commission was ever present in his mind, but he dared not approach the subject to raise a hope that might only be quenched again in deeper gloom. He dared not question him even, that he might judge of the probability for himself; he simply waited, hoping that in time the other would give the opening which he desired.