"I should. Oh, Stella, sing me a few!" urged the invalid, her tone quite imploring. "It would bring the dear old days back to me." Stella Featherston had a most melodious voice, but she did not play. It was not unusual in those days for girls to sing without any accompaniment, as Stella had for the most part done. "Have you forgotten your Scotch songs, Stella?" asked Mary Carimon. "Not I; I like them best of all," replied Miss Featherston. And without more ado she broke into "Ye banks and braes." It was followed by "The Banks of Allan Water," and others. Flore stole to the parlour-door, and thought she had never heard so sweet a singer. Last of all, Stella began a quaint song that was more of a chant than anything else, low and subdued: "Woe's me, for my heart is breakin', I think on my brither sma', And on my sister greetin', When I cam' from home awa'. And O, how my mither sobbit, As she took from me her hand, When I left the door of our old house To come to this stranger land. "There's nae place like our ain home, O, I would that I were there! There's nae home like our ain home To be met wi' onywhere. And O, that I were back again To our farm and fields sae green, And heard the tongues of our ain folk, And was what I hae been!" A feeling of despair ran through the whole words; and the tears were running down Ann Fennel's hectic cheeks as the melody died away in a plaintive silence. "It is what I shall never see again, Stella," she murmured--"the green fields of _our_ home; or hear the tongues of all the dear ones there. In my dreams, sometimes, I am at Selby Court, light-hearted and happy, as I was before I left it for this 'stranger land.' Woe's _me_, also, Stella!" * * * * * And now I come into the story--I, Johnny Ludlow. For what I have told of it hitherto has not been from any personal knowledge of mine, but from diaries, and from what Mary Carimon related to me, and from Featherston. It may be regarded as singular that I should have been, so to say, present at its ending, but that I _was_ there is as true as anything I ever wrote. The story itself is true in all its chief facts; I have already said that; and it is true that I saw the close of it. XVIII. To say that George Featherston, Doctor-in-ordinary at Buttermead, felt as if he were standing on his head instead of his heels, would not in the least express his mental condition as he stood in his surgery that September afternoon and read a letter, just delivered, from his sister, Madame Carimon. "Wants me to go to Sainteville to see Ann Preen; thinks she will die if I refuse, for the French doctors can do nothing for her!" commented Featherston, staring at the letter in intense perplexity, and then looking off it to stare at me.