“For yonder, with the light mercifully shining on it, stands Charlie’s chair; and beside me on this table are the first lilies of May, with dew upon their snowy leaves. They remind me of my child; not of the dead only, who long ago trod down the early blossoms of my life into the dust, but of the living Lilias, who is mine, not to be lost to me by any change. She has gone away from my old house now, with her bridegroom, but she is still my child. They blend together in my mind, the mother and the daughter, and in memory and in presence they cling to me, where neither jealousy nor fear can interpose, always my own. “And through the open turret window yonder, I hear the sound of a frank, bold voice; my heir, the manful and stout representative of the old Graemes. He is not like me, and it is well; his honest, joyous, youthful strength will raise up the decaying race. I cannot give my thoughts to Halbert--I cannot bequeath to him my old faculty of dreams--nor would I if I could. Some one, whom I know not, will inherit from me this contemplative life. I would not give it, if I had the power with all its sadnesses and glooms, to Halbert: he has the lands, the old honour, the good name. I am glad that I leave them to him pure, and that he is true and honest, and has not the spirit of his father. His father--who can tell? the greater mysteries of truth might open to him dying, who, living, heeded them not; but we do not speak of Charlie Graeme. Humbly in awe and silence we leave him in the great Hand which has taken him away; ourselves having pity on the dead. “For Hew and Lucy are with me again, gray-haired people in their father’s house; and Lucy’s son and my Lilias are our common hope. The three of us have had diverse lots, parted in far distant places, exposed to strange fortunes; but we end as we began, with kindred aims and kindred fancies, and travel together towards the one conclusion of mortal life, which is the same to all. “Hew’s troubles have been those of captivity and exile. To his warm heart, which always has answered so tenderly to voices of kindred and friendship, a very hard and bitter form of the inevitable discipline; but he has borne it bravely, and the frank, simple, guileless spirit has come unaltered through all. When we wander together by our Waterside, when I feel Hew’s arm diving through mine as it used to do thirty years ago, when I hear his unchanged voice addressing me, ‘Man, Adam!’ I close my eyes and thank God. We are young again; the intervening time floats on the air about us, a dream which we have dreamed together, and the enthusiast lads who leaned over yonder wall upon the dim hill-side, looking out dreamily over the royal city, are here, on the banks of the home river, as hopeful, as undoubting, and scarcely wiser than when they parted.