"No! I was only thinking it might be better for us all if his memory stopped where it is now--if he could forget." She clasped her hands together tightly. "If he could!--if only he could forget--I would not care how much I remembered." EPILOGUE. It was once more autumn. The rowans were as red, the heather as purple, as it had been in the year when Jeanie Duncan had sate for her portrait and Marjory Carmichael had taken her holiday; as red, as purple, as both will be until-- "The slow sea rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink." For Nature is supremely indifferent whether she gives birth to fools or knaves, or whether the Great Reaper fills his sheaf with wheat or tares. The evening shadows were lengthening in the Glen, and from the little school-house by the horse-chestnut tree the cadence of children's voices rose and fell over the stirring measure of a processional hymn. "Not so fast! not so fast! who told you to gallop it like that?" cried a smartly dressed young woman at the harmonium; a young lady with that curious resemblance to a commonplace book, which the profession of teaching brings to all but clever faces. "Miss Marjory was saying it should be gay-like," murmured a rebellious voice among the elder scholars; the younger pausing with awed glances at the only authority they had known. "Then she was wrong," retorted the Reverend James Gillespie's owner. "It should be stately and solemn as befits a--a hymn. Don't you agree with me, James?" "Perfectly, perfectly. The Bishop agrees also." His face beamed unalloyed content; for he had read "dust to dust, ashes to ashes," over many a coffin since his voice broke down one November morning some years ago, and the memory of one funeral scarcely troubles him more than another; each and all have a place in that growing sense of his sacerdotal position, which makes him greatly regret that in those earlier days he did not wear a biretta when exercising his priestly function in committing his flock to their graves. And the evening shadows were lengthening also along the white road that curves and crests the points and bays of the loch. A glint of light where Paul had stood like St. Christopher, a deeper shadow where Marjory had sate listening to the blabbing of the waves. Light and shadow mingled in the woods, through which they had run hand in hand, though with every moment the sunset glow left some golden birch or scarlet cherry; and down among the tall, silver firs by the house a faint white mist was beginning to rise over the trim lawns. "It is growing chill, Paul!" said an anxious voice. "To be continued in our next, Blazes; your aunt is inexorable!" The tone was gracious as ever, but thinner, as Paul Macleod rose from his lounge chair.