He tried to read the chapter as usual, but his sight failed, and he lay back upon the clay floor, and never rose from it again. The fever rapidly assumed the worst form of typhus, and ere the third day closed in, Margaret M’Kenzie was a widow indeed, and desolate. We will not linger over details too painful to be needlessly dwelt upon; we will not unveil a sorrow too sacred to be exposed and dissected; but we must observe, that there is one feature in the Highland character which exercised a painful influence on the poor family in this their hour of deepest affliction. From the rareness among them of such visitations, any disorder of a contagious or epidemic kind is regarded by the Highlanders with such a degree of horror as leads them to shrink from any offices involving contact with the sufferers, and thus there was none to help; and oh, who but those who have known what it is to feel the _loneliness_ of sorrow, can realize the strong consolation that the M’Kenzies found in the assurance of the sympathy of Christ, and in the remembrance that of him in his sufferings, it is written,—“Of the people there was none with me?” The elder boy had been sent to the nearest place to procure a coffin, and to promise the cow in payment,—it was their only remaining possession, except the heather mattress, and _that_ none would take, from dread of the fever,—and Margaret’s wedding gown, which her husband had tried to exchange for money or for food; but no one had either to give for it. When the carpenter heard the boy’s name, he shrunk back, and bade him be gone, in a voice in which terror predominated over sympathy. In due time, however, the coffin was brought to the door, and there deposited; and of the few clansmen who attended to bear their kinsman to the grave, not one would enter the dwelling to assist in moving the remains of him to whom living or dying, under any other circumstances, they would have refused nothing. Poor Margaret! that _was_ a trial! but not greater than the promise,—“_As_ thy day, so shall thy strength be.” It was indeed a dark, dark day; but the promise _could_ not be hidden, even though it was a darkness to be _felt_. _How_ it was accomplished, the poor widow knew not. The first-born had helped, and fallen panting at the threshold, fainting with exertion and with horror; and when the door was opened, those without drew back, and bade her, though in tones of solemn pity, lay her burden in its narrow bed herself; and then they signed to her to retire. She closed the door behind her, and in a few minutes they drew round the coffin, closed, and bore it to the boat, and rowed in silence to the island resting-place of the M’Kenzies, in the middle of the lake.