Year: 1866

1


your son, and you liked him with reason


twice as well as your daughter l woulc
, not suffer my fathers tyranny"


Jess, Jess, you do not know what yol
are saying. | could not rebel against tn,


minister And do not you misjudge YOU
father he groans in his sleep and thinl


how good a man he is. And oh, Jess yor
cannot mind, but can, how he took the
candle and held it over Sandy in the cradle
And when your little sister died, and yOuI
father at the Glenork preachings, and
sent the nearest elder to meet him to break
to him the distress at home, he guessed il
before MIR. Allan could get out the words


He was always a sharp man. your father


and he just put up his hand and plead with


the messenger, Not Sandy tell me it is


not Sandy 1t was not that he was not


fond of his lasses, Jess, yOu know but


they could not bear his name and uphold


his Masters credit as his lad would do"


Though Mrs. Stewart did nothing


could do othing,--when Jess came to


think of it, sobbing in her own room in the


reaction after her recantation, both for San
dy and for Birkholm, from that days conf


dence mother and daughter were knit to-


gether as they had not been before. In
the beginning Jess had been little too
vigorous and energetic for her mild tender
mother but Mrs. Stewart clung to Jess
In the end with mingled fond respect, deep
gratitude, and yearning affection.


On Sabbath days, when the minister left
his wife in the kirk porch to go into the
| session-room, it was on Jesss arm that
Mrs. Stewart now leant for the short dis
tance up the aisle to the minister's bucht,
on the right hand of the pulpit. On the
few other occasions when she crossed her
threshold, while she was able to move
about among her flowers, or stroll to the
Kames for the spectacle of the setting OF
| the sun, which shone ON other lands besides
Scotland, she sought to have Jess on the
one side of her and the minister on the
other.


Another popularity of Mrs Stewards
this summer was her struggle against her
teebleness, her efforts to convince herself
and others that she was gaining strength
the eagerness with which she applied every
means for the restoration of her health
new milk, port wine, even to the homeIy,
uncouth superstitions of a stocking from
the minister's foot wrapped round her
throat at night, and the breath of the COWS
in the cOw-house the first thing of morn
ing. 1t was as if something had happened
which would not let her die when her time
came.


1t was well for Jess that she was much
with her mother during the summer, and
that their communion was that of perfect
love for before the summer was ended
Mrs. Stewart was attacked by sudden
increase of illness, and after a weeks suff-
ering was gone where she might have clear
intelligence of Sandy, to which all the
knowledge of this world would have been
no more than the discordant words of an
unknown tongue.


There could have been no time to write
for Sandy, even had the minister and Jess
known where he was to be found, and Mrs
Stewart had not asked for her son. No
immediate danger had been anticipated by
the doctor, or apprehended by the patient
and her relations, until with few hours
of her death, and then speech and in part
consciousness had failed her. Unless the
look of the eyes, which, heavy with their
last long slumber, reused themselves to
search round the room, once and again, re-
ferred to the absence Of Sandy, Mrs. Stew |
art passed away with her love, perhaps |
like most great love, silent.


But when all was over, Jess thought |
with breaking heart of the ignorance of
him who had most cause to mourn, and of
his place filled by others less entitled to be
there on the day when the wife and mother
was borne to her grave beside her baby
who had passed from her mothers bosom |
to the bosom of the second mother of us all, |
the earth, who if she had lived, would have |
been an older woman than Jess and be-
side the old divines who had filled the min
ister's pulpit, aud their faithful wives, of
centuries back, in the grassy kirkyard
within sight of the widows of her old home, |
where stormy wind might carry the leaves
from her garden and scatter them on
the mound. That mound whether white
with May gowans or December SHOWS,
would never be out of the minister's and
Jess's minds, and near it distance-divided
families and former neighbors would still
meet and be glad to have their crack in
the kirkyard," and not forget to say softly
in her praise what fine gentlewoman the
minister's wife had been, ard how the min
lister, poor man, would miss her.


If Adam SpOttswoode had been at Birk- |
holm, Jess might have applied to him in
her desperation t. learn if he had heard |
anything of Sandy, and to beg of him to
intercede with her father for his son. But
Birkholm was absent at the moors, and |
Jess had respect for her fathers atfliction,
and would not torture him to no end
Therefore Mr. Stewart and Jess bore the
brunt of that dark dark day--the darker
that it was in the height of summer, the
prime and pride of the year-alone, but
for sorrowing neighbors and dependents.


When Mr.. Stewart returned to the manse
after the funeral party was dispersed, and
retired to his room, Jess could not intrude
on him. 1t was the room to which he had
brought her bride, and she had died in it.
1T was her room now while his time of the
manse lasted, though she had vacated it
humbly during her life. Jsss had too much
fellow-feeling with her father not to divine
that no hand but his own would by suff-
cred to dispose of its mistress's little shawl
and cap, which in the hurry of her last i'll
ness had been put on the side-table among
his books. He would see them there, sit
ting in the cleaning at his meditations,
and half believe that her light foot--at her
teeblest it was light one-would be heard
again on the threshold, and her fair, faded
face, which had been to him as none other
hnt GO Jx,in l.