The men would have still evaded a reply, and were, indeed, both edging out of the apartment, to avoid being further pressed on the subject, when M'Lauchlane seized one of them by the arm, and besought him not to leave him, without giving him what information he possessed on the subject of his inquiry. "Has any accident happened him?" said the miserable father. "Is he dead? Tell me, for Heaven's sake, tell me the worst at once. I can bear it. If he is dead, I say, God's will be done. Is it so or not, my friend?" again said M'Lauchlane, with a look of wretchedness that the man could not resist. "I am afraid he is," was the reply. "Still, I say God's will be done," said M'Lauchlane, endeavouring to display a composure he was far, very far from feeling. He next inquired into the time and manner of his death. On being informed, the unhappy man instantly sank down on the floor in a state of insensibility. He had little dreamt of such a horrible catastrophe; and, however resigned he might have been to his boy's having met with a natural death, his fortitude was unequal to the dreadful trial it was now called on to sustain. On coming again to himself, the unfortunate man left the office without exchanging a word with any one, and returned to his own house. When he entered, his wife, as was her usual practice, eagerly inquired if he had yet heard any tidings of their son; but she soon saw that she had no occasion whatever to put the question. The haggard countenance of her husband--a countenance in which the utmost depth of human misery was strongly depicted--assured her at once that tidings had been heard of the boy, and that these were of the most dismal kind. "He's dead, then," she screamed out, on looking on the wo-begone, or rather horror-stricken face of her husband--"my boy is gone." And she flung herself on the floor in a paroxysm of grief and despair. To his wife's exclamations, M'Lauchlane made no reply, but threw himself on a bed, and buried his head beneath the clothes. But this covering did not conceal the dreadful writhings of the crushed spirit beneath. The bedclothes heaved with the violent emotions that shook the powerful frame of the miserable sufferer. From that bed M'Lauchlane never again rose. He never, however, told his wife of the unhappy death her son had died; steadily and even sternly resisting all the importunities on that appalling subject; and whether she ever learned it, we are not aware. MAJOR WEIR'S COACH. A LEGEND OF EDINBURGH.[7]