'I saw your mother, Willie Lisle, the day before she died. Your father told me that she wished to speak with me. Her weakness was too great for many words, but her last thoughts and her last cares were all for you. Her death, like her life, was most peaceful and beautiful. She bade you remember the promise you made her when Farmer Foster brought you here, that you would be a good boy without her always. She had prayed God much that He would help you, and she sent you her blessing. Something she said of the day that you left her. "Tell him," the words were, "that I am glad he gave the cup of water to that dying man, and that I have rejoiced as I lay here to think how he began then to try and follow our Lord's command. All that has come of it has been for the best. Tell him how sure I am of this," and her smile, Willie, when she said that, was most bright to look upon.' Master Caleb paused. 'I have little more to say,' he added presently, 'except this, that she left a solemn charge to you. You remember the sick soldier's son?' I looked up with sudden remembrance. Until now I had well-nigh forgotten him. 'Before his father died, your mother had promised him that the boy, Cuthbert Franklyn, should be to her as her own child. To you she leaves the fulfilment of her promise, and she bids you be his brother. She was very earnest about this. I think she would fain have said more, but her voice failed her. Then she clasped her hands, and though I waited for her to speak again, only once or twice she whispered your name. A few hours after I left her she entered into her rest.' That was all. Farmer Foster and the dame pushed back their chairs and unfolded their hands. Master Caleb bent forward, and, looking as if he were half ashamed to do it, gravely kissed my forehead. All that evening they were busy over the inscription that was to be put on my mother's tombstone. Farmer Foster had planned it all out himself, and wanted the schoolmaster's approval, for he was rather proud of his work. It was very long, as the fashion was in those days. I think now that if she herself could have known about it, fewer, plainer words would have pleased her more. I still hear the farmer's voice repeating with grave relish the last words: 'She departed this life leaving a broken-hearted husband and an only child to mourn her irreparable loss.' Broken-hearted! Was my father really that? I wondered what broken-hearted people did, and how they went on living. I was sure I was quite as sorry as my father, and yet my heart beat just the same as usual. Whether he were broken-hearted or not, he looked to me quite unchanged, when he came the next day, with White Billy in the cart, to take me home. As usual he said no more than he could help, only thanking the good old people who had been so kind to me in a few gruff words, when each holding one of my hands they brought me out of the house and gave me back to him.