'Mary, Mary, let me hear your voice again!' he said, as he folded her in his arms, yet with that expression of doubt in his haggard eye, as of one who feared the joy around him might be a dream and pass away. 'Take her to your heart, my boy--the same blood runs in your veins!' said old Sir Piers, all unused to act 'the heavy parent,' but his keen bright eyes were as humid and moist as an old man's can well be, as he took Cecil's face between his withered hands, and gazed into his features as if he thought he could never look at them sufficiently; 'my own boy's eyes!' he exclaimed, with a kind of sob in his throat; 'my own boy's brow and lips--my poor Piers--you are his son--his son!' A soft kiss was now laid upon his cheek--the kiss of Annabelle Erroll, and then the latter retired into the recess of a window, with her tall, dark lover Fotheringhame, who had no doubt a vast deal to tell her, and seemed to do so, very quietly and very softly, under the shadow of the curtains. 'My darling, my darling!' Cecil could but whisper again and again. 'Oh, Cecil--Cecil, whom I thought I was never--never to see again! How have I ever lived through all this!' she kept repeating; 'why did you go to Servia?' 'What mattered it where I went _then_--at the time, I mean!' He gave a short sigh, as even her beloved cheek on his wounded chest made him wince. 'Egad, what a home-coming we'll have!' said the general; 'Rungeet entering Lahore will be nothing to it! Old John Balderstone, and Mrs. Garth, widow of Garth, of Ours--you remember her, Cecil? will be mustering the tenants and everybody--old Tunley too--what a Christmas we'll have! And there will be a bonfire on the old tower-head at Eaglescraig, that will light up the whole Firth of Clyde!' But the lovers thought only of the future, which seemed so close and certain now. Pillowed on Mary's breast--surrounded by friends and all the perfect safety of home and assured position, there was--to Cecil--a calm and delicious joy in existence now, after all the fierce whirl, the aching disappointment, and the wild excitement of his life recently. THE END. BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS AND ELECROTYPERS, GUILDFORD. _J. W. & Sons._