Mr. Charles waved his hand--he was too breathless to speak--and hurried upstairs. A dead calm seemed to have fallen on the house. A frightened woman-servant met him on the stairs, creeping down on tiptoe. It seemed to be years that he had been wandering about the streets, absent from his post. Then the doctor met him, and pointed silently to the closed door, shaking his head. Trembling, conscience-stricken, weary and sick with his suspense, Mr. Charles crept into the sick-room. All was quiet and silent there, except some gasps for breath. Mr. Heriot stood at one side of the bed, Marjory at the other. Fanshawe, Tom’s friend, was at the foot, leaning against the bed, and hiding his face with his hand. Mr. Charles trembled too much to be of use to any one; he stood behind them all, wiping his forehead, trying to see with his hot and dazzled eyes. Nothing to be done, and nothing to be said! It had come to that. Tom was out of hearing, though they had so much to say to him. And he, too, had much to say, but had left it all unsaid. Who can tell the anguish of such a moment for those who are called upon to survive? To stand by helpless, impotent; willing to do everything, capable of nothing--nothing but to look on. Humanity has no agony so great. At the very last, poor Tom came out of his death-struggle, as by a miracle, and looked at his watchers. “I told you, May,” he said, faintly. “I told you!” These were his last words. He seemed to die repeating them in a whisper, which grew fainter and fainter: “I told her--told her; I told--thank God!” Oh! for what, poor deceived soul? They looked at each other with a thrill of terror which overcame even their grief. What did he thank God for as he crossed the threshold of the other life? CHAPTER VII. The Manse of Comlie had one window, which looked upon the churchyard--only one, as Mrs. Murray congratulated herself--and that in a room which was never used but where on occasional moments now and then the old lady would go and sit by herself, not rejecting for her own part the pensive associations which she deprecated for others. On the day of poor Tom Heriot’s funeral, there were two old faces at this window. One was that of Miss Jean Heriot, in new “blacks,” as she called her mourning; whose interest in the melancholy ceremony had overcome even that strong sense of decorum with which a Scottish woman of her age would, under other circumstances, have shut herself up on the day of a funeral “in the family.” In Scotland, in former days, the attendance of a woman at a funeral was unknown; and it was partly because it was understood that Marjory was to be present, that her old grand-aunt stole across in the early morning, before any one was about, in order to witness, with a mixture of grief, interest, and disapproval, the innovations in the simple ceremonial with which the heir of Pitcomlie was conducted to his last resting-place.