“New-fangled ways--new-fangled ways!” she was saying to herself. “What the better is the poor body for all that praying? The lad’s soul is beyond the power of prayer. He’s in his Maker’s hand. He was but an ill young lad, and I’m glad for your sake that the doctor has nothing to say about things that can never be known till all’s known. I cannot abide these changes. I approved Marjory when she threw in her lot with the old Kirk, though brought up otherwise; but I do not approve of changing auld forms and ways to make them like anither ritual. No, no; that’s not a thing I can approve. But half Fife is there,” she added, with a long-drawn breath of satisfaction, “I am thankful to think that the family is not letten down, whatever happens. There’s Lord Largo himself, or I’m sore mistaken, and all the family from Magusmoor. It shows great respect--great respect. Thomas Heriot may be proud; there’s men there that would not have come so far for King or Commons. I’m thankful myself to see that real old friendship aye lasts. Marjory being there is the only eyesore to me. She should have stayed at home. Women should bide at home. It would have set her better to have learned a lesson to her young sister how life’s uncertain and death’s sure.” “Poor bairn! she will learn that soon enough.” Miss Jean made no reply. She leant her chin upon her cane, and kept looking out, the slight tremulous movement of her head communicating a certain vibration to all the outline of her figure and black drapery. Her mind was intent upon the different groups standing about against the grey churchyard wall, bareheaded under the sun. One by one she recognised them, with her keen eyes. She had known them and their fathers and grandfathers before them, every one. The central group of all was perhaps that which the old woman noted least. She had been grieved for “the family” chiefly because Tom was the heir, and the property must now go to the second son, a thing which was unknown in the Heriot traditions. But her grief was short and soon exhausted, as perhaps every strong sentiment is at her age. She no longer thought of Tom, nor of his desolate father, for whom at first she had been very sorry. What she was principally concerned with, was to see that all was done as it ought to be done, and that nowhere was there any failure of “respect.” And on this point she had been fully satisfied, so that the effect upon her mind, as she sat at the Manse window, was rather one of deep and sombre gratification than of grief. “Thomas Heriot may be proud,” she repeated to herself, and she was sincerely unconscious of any incongruity in the thought.