The three sons of the house were in the room watching with their mother. Huntley, who could scarcely keep still, even in the awe of this shadow of death, stood by the front window, often drawing close to the bed, but unable to continue there. The second, who was his mother’s son, a healthful, ruddy, practical lad, kept on the opposite side of the bed, ready to help his mother in moving the patient. And at the foot, concealed by the curtains, a delicate boy of fifteen, with his face buried in his hands, sat upon an old square ottoman, observing nothing. This was Cosmo, the youngest and favorite, the only one of his children who really resembled Norlaw. The caprice of change was strong upon the dying man; he wanted his position altered twenty times in half an hour. He had not any thing much to say, yet he was hard to please for the manner of saying it; and longed, half in a human and tender yearning for remembrance, and half with the weakness of his character, that his children should never forget these last words of his, nor the circumstances of his dying. He was a good man, but he carried the defects of his personality with him to the very door of heaven. When, at last, the pillows were arranged round him, so as to raise him on his bed in the attitude he wished, he called his children, in his trembling voice. Huntley came forward from the window, with a swelling heart, scarcely able to keep down the tears of his first grief. Patrick stood by the bed-side, holding down his head, with a stubborn composure--and Cosmo, stealing forward, threw himself on his knees and hid his sobbing in the coverlid. They were all on one side, and on the other stood the mother, the care on her brow blanching into conviction, and all her tremulous anxiety calmed with a determination not to disturb this last scene. It _was_ the last. Hope could not stand before the look of death upon that face. “My sons,” said Norlaw, “I am just dying; but I know where I am in this strait, trusting in my Saviour. You’ll remember I said this, when I’m gone.” There was a pause. Cosmo sobbed aloud in the silence, clinging to the coverlid, and Huntley’s breast heaved high with a tumultuous motion--but there was not a word said to break the monologue of the father, who was going away. “And now you’ll have no father to guide you further,” he continued, with a strange pity for them in his voice. “There’s your mother, at my side--as true a wife and as faithful, as ever a man had for a blessing. Boys, I leave your mother, for her jointure, the love you’ve had for me. Let her have it all--all--make amends to her. Martha, I’ve not been the man I might have been to you.”