“Does it?” he said; “that’s just what I want to be sure of, Bell. Time has made great changes on me. If I find her just where she was when she left me, I have gone long beyond that; and if she has gone on too, where is she? and how shall we meet, each with our new experiences which the other does not know?” Bell was very much perplexed by this inquiry. It had not occurred to her own mind. “Eh, Sir Ludovic,” she said, “I am no the one, the like o’ me, to clear up sic mysteries. But what new things can the lady meet with in heaven, but the praise o’ God and the love o’ God? and that doesna distract the mind.” “Ah, Bell! but I’ve met with a great many more things since I parted with her; and then,” he said, with a gleam in his eyes which might have been half comic in its embarrassment had the circumstances been different, “there is--my little Peggy’s mother, poor thing.” Bell sat down, in her confusion and bewilderment, by the bedside, and pondered. “I’m thinking,” she said, “that my late leddy, Miss Margret’s mother, will be the one that will maist cling to ye when a’s done.” “Poor little thing!” he said, softly, with a smile on his face--“poor little thing! She should have seen me safe out of the world, and then had a life of her own. That would have made a balance; but how are we to know what my wife thinks? You see, we know nothing--we know nothing. And it is very hard to tell, when people have been parted so long, and things have happened, how they are to get on when they meet again.” (Sir Ludovic, perhaps, was a little confused in his mind as to which of the Ladies Leslie he meant when he said “my wife;” but at all events it was not the last one, the “poor little thing,” Margaret’s mother, who was to him as a child.) “Sir Ludovic, there’s neither marrying nor giving in marriage there,” said Bell, solemnly. It had never occurred to herself certainly that old John would not form part of her paradise; but then there was no complication in their relations. “And you maunna think of things like that,” she added, reverently, “eh, Sir Ludovic? There’s One we should a’ think of. And if He’s pleased, what does it matter for anything else in the wide world?” “Ay, Bell; that’s very true, Bell,” he said, acquiescing, though scarcely remarking what she said. But the dying will rarely see things with the solemnity which the living feel to be appropriate to their circumstances, neither does the approach of death concentrate our thoughts on our most important concerns, as we all fondly hope it may, without difficulty or struggle. “I would like to know--what my wife thinks,” he said.