So as soon as I showed the latter to him he put out his hand for it. Then he held it a moment, kissed it, and gave it back to me. ’Be a good lad,’ he said quietly and composedly. ’Fear not for me; I go in friendship with all men. Poor, poor Cloncaird!’ he said, thinking of one of his murderers whom he had always befriended, ’it is a pity for his wife and young family!’ Then he closed his eyes and we thought he had already passed from us. But presently he opened them again and looked toward me. ’Be kind to Nelly!’ he said, smiling so kindly at me, that my heart nearly broke. He shook his head at seeing my grief and the tears running down, for, indeed, I could not withhold them. ’There is no need,’ he said, reprovingly, ’no need for the like of that ava’. Be a brave lad, Launcelot, and just as true to your God as you have proved to me, who have been a loving master to you here below. I am only wae for the poor, misguided lads, that were so far left to themselves as to lay me here like this.’ And with that there was but his body on the sands, for the spirit of the gentlest master that ever a man served had gone its way to its own Master. But it was even as he said—for the end of such an one there is no need of tears. Then I stood up, and the terrible thought came in upon me like Solway tide. How—how shall I take him home to Helen Kennedy—to his orphaned bairns, and to the stricken house of Culzean? *CHAPTER XXX* *I SEEK FOR VENGEANCE* Ay, well might I say it. How was I to face Nell Kennedy—she that had with a long, kindly look committed her father into my keeping that very morning? Tenderly we lifted the body, which in life had been so noble and now was so pitifully mishandled. The villains had despoiled the dainty garmentry, torn the lace, and snatched the jewellery which Helen Kennedy had set in place as, daffing right merrily, she prepared her father (as she said) to ’gang worthily and bonnily before the King.’ But the King he went before was One, as he himself would often say, that looked not on the outer appearance but on the heart. And concerning that last Thomas Kennedy need have had no fear that his would not be well looked upon—for it was upright, and kindly, and true, nor did it ever move to the hurt of any man in all this world. And as I took him up, I saw still more clearly the black-hearted rage of the persecutors. For it showed as manifestly as any other fact the hellish intent of the murderers, that they had taken time, even while I was in the act to come at them, to despoil my master of his purse with a thousand merks of gold therein. Nay, his very ring of fine diamonds they tore from his finger, and his golden buttons of wrought goldsmith work were riven from his frilled sark—one murderous loon snatching one thing and the other another, worse than brute beasts of the field.