So as a hateful dream the details of death passed on. 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.' The vicar's voice fell clearly in the calm spring air on the ear of Alison as she leant on the doctor's arm, for very few were present at the funeral, and these few, save Archie, were strangers; but her soul seemed to shrink within her as she heard the shovelfuls of gravel pattering down on the polished coffin-lid and the large metal plate, which bore the name and age of 'SIR RANALD CHEYNE, BART., OF THAT ILK AND ESSILMONT.' The last of her race, save _herself_! 'Surely, surely, if he is in England, Bevil will come to me now when he hears of this calamity!' she whispered in her heart, as she sat in the solitude of her own room when all was over. But Bevil Goring came not. He had never had explained to him the cause of her abrupt and mysterious flight or departure from Chilcote, and the subsequent trip in Cadbury's yacht, and why, or how, she had neither time nor opportunity to write to him the briefest note of farewell or enlightenment on the subject; but all that had nothing to do with his absence on the present occasion, as we shall relate anon. But she was brooding sadly over it, while--declining the proffered hospitality of the vicarage--she sat in her loneliness, watching the stars as they came out one by one, thinking of the bitterness and brevity of human life, and marvelling how many millions of the human race these orbs had looked down upon, and would yet look down upon, in the ages to come. Her father's spendthrift errors in youth, and his petulance and selfishness in old age, were all forgotten by Alison now. She remembered only his love for herself, and even repented that she could not gratify him by sacrificing herself to Cadbury. Would she have prolonged his life by doing so? That was a problem on which she could not--dared not dwell. His tenants--or rather those who had been his tenants--far away among the Braes of Aberdeenshire, longer than they might have been, but for the merciful consideration of his creditors--men who, even in this advanced age, deemed themselves born vassals of the house of Cheyne, as their fathers did when the Red Harlaw was fought, or the Brig o' Dee was bravely manned in the days of Montrose--were stirred with much genuine grief when they heard of his death. For, though proud to his equals, he had ever been a friendly and kindly landlord to them, and thinking of them ever, in the good spirit of the olden time, as 'my father's people,' he would shake warmly the hand of old Donald Gordon, the gudeman of a little farm-town, while asking after his wife and daughters by name; though he would barely nod his aristocratic head to some 'earth-hungry' commercial man, who had acquired a fine estate--all won by honest industry. 'Oh, why does not Bevil come to me; if in England, he must have heard of papa's death?' was her ever recurring thought.