’_Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde_’: that phrase also returned again and again. And then he would go back to his school-days, and tell Maisrie about a little patch of garden that had been given all to himself; how he had watched the yellow spears of the crocuses pierce the dry earth, and the green buds begin to show on the currant-bushes; how he had planted scarlet-runners, and stuck the wands in, and trained the young shoots; how he had waited for the big red globes of the peonies to unroll; how he had white monkshood, and four distinct colours of columbine. Then his pets; his diversions; his terrible adventures—half drowned in a mill-dam—lost in a snowstorm on Laidlaw moor—the horrors of a certain churchyard which he had sometimes to pass, alone, on the dark winter evenings. Maisrie did not seek to interrupt him. There was no agitation in these wandering reminiscences. Nay, they seemed to soothe him; and sometimes he sank into an altogether dozing state. "Vincent," said Lady Musselburgh, when these two happened to find themselves together, in the room below, "have you no authority over that girl? She is killing herself!" "It is no use remonstrating," said he. "She knows what the doctor has not dared to tell her. She sees that her grandfather is so weak he may slip away at any moment, without a word or a sign." But on the evening of this second day, the old man, with such remnant of his former resolution and defiance as still clung to him, seemed to try to shake off this fatal lethargy—if only to say farewell. And in this last hour or so of his life, the spectacle that George Bethune presented was no unworthy one. Death, or the approach of death, which ennobles even the poorest and the meanest, was now dealing with this man; and all the husks and histrionic integuments that had obscured or hidden his true nature seemed to fall away from him. He stood out himself—no pressure of poverty distorting his mind—no hopeless regrets embittering his soul. It was Scotland he thought of. In those last minutes and moments, the deepest passion of his heart—an intense and proud love of his native land—burned pure and strong and clear; and if he showed any anxiety at all, it was merely that Maisrie, who was a kind of stranger, should form a liking for this country to which she, too, in a measure, belonged—that she should see it under advantageous conditions—that she should think of all that had been said of those hills and vales, and endow them with that added charm.