toward the light in the passage, a light which was more cheerful, more reassuring, than the pale beginning of the day. The door of his father’s room was ajar, and the light was burning within, and a faint glimmer as of firelight. Jock crept in, trembling and shivering, in his little white night-gown, like an incarnation of the white, cold, tremulous, infantile day. Jock stole in very quietly, feeling protection in the warmth and stillness; he edged his way in the shadow of the curtains, drawing instinctively toward the fire, but afraid of being seen and turned out again. He was afraid, yet he was very curious and anxious about the bed, in which he knew his father was lying. The curtains at the head were thrown back, twisted and pushed out of the way to give more air; and there the pale gray head of the old man revealed itself on the pillow, lying motionless. Jock stopped short with a sob in his throat, and terror, too intense for expression, in his soul. His father had not “passed away;” but whether he was alive or dead, Jock could not tell. The nurse was dozing in the stillness, in her chair by the fire. The day was rising, penetrating, even here, between the closed curtains, with that chill, all-pervading blueness; it was the moment when every watch relaxes, when the strain is relieved, and weariness makes itself felt. Not a sound was to be heard, except now and then the ashes falling, and the breathing of the strange woman in the big chair, who was almost as alarming an object to Jock as his father. The child stood shivering, his mouth half open, to cry, the sob arrested, by pure terror, in his throat. And whether it was that the sob escaped unawares, or that some sense of the presence of another living creature in the room, that subtle consciousness with which the atmosphere seems to penetrate itself, of a living and thinking soul in it, reached the old man on the bed, it is impossible to say; but while Jock stood watching, his father suddenly opened his eyes, and turned, ever so little, yet turned toward him. Jock was not aware that the old man had been up to this time unable to move, but his imagination was excited, and the instantaneous revival into awful life of the mute figure on the bed produced the strangest effect upon him. A wild scream burst from his lips; he ran out to the stairs crying wildly. “He has got his release,” Jock cried, not knowing what he said.