'Save the puir lassie, he is the last o' the Cheynes o' Essilmont, my lord,' said Archie, in a very broken voice, as he ushered the peer out one day; 'the last leaf o' a lang, lane: ancestral tree!' 'What the devil is the use of a family tree unless one could sell it for timber,' replied the peer, as he took his horse's reins from Gaskins; 'and as for ancestors' (this was rather a sore subject with him), 'if one could raise the wind on them, there is many a fellow who wouldn't even leave himself a father just now!' And so his lordship cantered off, sitting in his saddle, as Archie said, 'for a' the warld like a pock o' peats.' Alison was watching her father sleeping, while this would-be lover rode pleasantly home to his luxurious dinner, and, as she watched him, she thought how fearfully wan and gray his face looked; and yet how noble it was in its manly beauty. What a handsome youth he must have been, when he won her mother's heart as a girl. 'How dark it has become!' she murmured in a low voice, as Archie brought noiselessly in a carefully shaded lamp, 'and the sunset was so unnaturally bright,' she added, in a kind of whisper, with a convulsive trembling of her lips and a strange pitifulness and foreboding in heart as she resumed her seat by the bedside, in shadow. Dr. Kneebone had looked at the sinking patient for the last time, and departed with a very grave face--grave, for his kindly heart was full of pity for the young girl, who now knew that the great change would come before long. The vicar of Chilcote had read the prayers for the dying, and not without deep emotion, for he was a warm-hearted old man; and after placing the book in Alison's hand, with certain pages marked for her perusal, had departed also; and she--declining all offers of feminine assistance from the vicarage--remained alone, and choked with emotion by the bedside, with one of her father's passive hands clasped in hers, to wait and to watch. A storm was rising without, but great was the hush of silence in the half-darkened chamber as the hours of the night stole solemnly on; and Archie and Mrs. Rebecca Prune, approaching the door on tip-toe, peeped in from time to time, but were always warned away by a wave of Alison's hand. On the mantelpiece ticked a handsome little carriage clock, one of the few remaining relics of former wealth and luxury; but the sound it made was soon lost amid the din of the elemental war without. Once or twice Alison mechanically turned her pale and hopeless face to the window; the bare black branches of the great beeches were tossing on the gale, and dark clouds were hurrying past the white, weird disc of the moon; eerily wailed the blast around the old house, rustling the rain-soaked creepers on its walls, and the great drops swept in gusts upon the rattling window panes. The patient stirred restlessly; the din of the rising storm--oh, could she but muffle it, shut it out--disturbed him.