countenance of the Divine Father and Friend.' Mr. Sandison said this in a slow, dry tone, as if the utterance were difficult. Strong emotion scarcely dares to filter itself through speech, lest speech give way before it.

Tom understood him far too well to breathe a single word. They sat in silence for a long time—till the twilight faded into darkness, and there was nothing but the dull glimmer of a street lamp to dimly reveal the outline of their figures and of the furniture.

Mr. Sandison was the first to break the spell. He rose up, saying cheerfully, 'Well, the house is open now. Let God's breeze blow through it, and God's sunshine brighten it, and let us watch patiently to see what living seeds they will bear into it, and bring to blossom within it.'

He was speaking half of the closed-up and desolate rooms, and half of his own closed-up desolate heart, of which they had been but the result and the type.

That night, before Mr. Sandison went to rest, he stole up to the room where the aged woman lay, in her strange life-in-death.

Grace's room had always been comfortable. Peter Sandison had seen to that from the first. But poor Kirsty's zealous efforts had done

A

much for it during her day's attendance. liberal fire was glowing on the hearth, for the spring nights were still chilly. Kirsty had got the shopboy to bring her in some spring flowers, -crocuses and daffodils,—and these stood in a brown pot on a little table beside the bed. From the bed itself Kirsty had removed the drab coverlid and had substituted a white counterpane, which she had found in the linen closet to which she had been given free access; and over the foot of the couch she had thrown, for added warmth, a coarse scarlet blanket.

'If the poor thing can't speak and can't hear,' said Kirsty, speaking audibly as she went about the room, then there's the more occasion she should see what's pleasant. And there's the master to consider, too. And this is the master's mother, it seems, and there's been terrible trouble of some sort. The world's full of trouble, and there's always somebody's wickedness at the bottom of it. I think the master will let me stay and nurse the poor old lady. This house is just a heaven to me. Oh, what a fool I was to think nothing was so good as pleasure and finery! and what a price I've paid for my folly! I wonder if I'll ever want to be bad again? again? I'm feared I should if I was in sight o' folks like the

Branders, so I suppose that shows I've not really learned a bit of wisdom yet—except it may be that I'd have sense to keep out of the way of such like. How different it might have been if I'd gone to that watchmaker's quiet house in Edinburgh. And what's to become of poor Hannah? When the master said that if I'd stay and do the nursing, he'd get somebody for the housework, I could not help thinking of her, but I daren't mention her, for she can't be trusted to keep from the drink for two hours together.'

When Kirsty saw the master coming into the room, she rose from her low seat by the fire and passed quietly out.

Mr. Sandison carried in one hand the big Bible, which he had brought up from the dining-room. In the other hand he had an inkstand, and behind his ear there was a pen. He laid the book on the table beside the invalid. He did not look at her as he did so. She gave a deep groan.

He opened the volume, turning to the flyleaves, between whose severed pages lay the few old papers which that morning had wrought such havoc in a lifetime's hypocrisy. He took them up, one by one, still not looking towards the bed. He turned away and went towards the fire, taking the seat which Kirsty had

He knew that Grace could see every One by one, in no haste, but with liberation, he put those papers on fire. It swiftly caught them up ed them utterly.

rose, and went back to the open on the table. He took the pen, on the blank fly-leaf, in large, bold From Peter Sandison to his mother.'

turned the book, and held it e invalid. She could easily read itten there, and when she had done I her pitiful eyes, and they met his. could pass between them now. bled with her numb hands, and and drew it upon her pillow, and ce, twice.

dison bent down and kissed her re was a moisture on it.

all. watch.

He summoned Kirsty to And he went away, only his hand before he closed the door. -od!' he said to himself. And

ut this might have come to pass I had been wiser? Thank God 1 reveal our sins to us, though plot them out! The truth, at any can strike root in nothing else!'

ATE in the following summer, Tom
Ollison paid another visit to Clegga.
He had been longing very much to

do so, but the suggestion finally came from Mr. Sandison. (Had he noticed how much more often those Kirkwall letters had arrived since Tom's last visit to the North?)

'I wish you would bring your father back to spend the winter with us, Tom,' he said; 'don't you think you could persuade him? You know there are plenty of spare rooms now! I never thought how they were wasted, while they were shut up, but now it seems a terrible waste to think of them open and empty!'

Mr. Sandison did not go very much into those deserted rooms. His life had grown into his parlour and shop. Still he went into them, determined to lay for ever the ghost of the old

294