ount Pisgah and
seeing all the land about him, north and south, east and west. Eh, lass!
there's a change in us all now!"

"Ah! it's like another world!" said the old woman, shaking her head
slowly. "All the folks I used to sew for at Aston, and Uppington, and
Overlehill, they'd mostly be gone or dead by now. It wouldn't seem like
the same place at all. And now there's none but you and me left, brother
James. Well, well! its lonesome, growing old."

"Yes, lonesome, yet not exactly lonesome," replied old Oliver, in a
dreamy voice. "I'm growing dark a little, and just a trifle deaf, and I
don't feel quite myself like I used to do; but I've got something I
didn't use to have. Sometimes of an evening, before I've lit the gas,
I've a sort of a feeling as if I could almost see the Lord Jesus, and
hear him talking to me. He looks to me something like our eldest brother,
him that died when we were little. Charlotte, thee remembers him? A
white, quiet, patient face, with a smile like the sun shining behind
clouds. Well, whether it's only a dream or no I cannot tell, but there's
a face looks at me, or seems to look at me out of the dusk; and I think
to myself, maybe the Lord Jesus says, 'Old Oliver's lonesome down there
in the dark, and his eyes growing dim. I'll make myself half-plain to
him.' Then he comes and sits here with me for a little while."

"Oh, that's all fancy as comes with you living quite alone," said
Charlotte, sharply.

"Perhaps so! perhaps so!" answered the old man, with a meek sigh; "but I
should be very lonesome without that."

They did not speak again until Charlotte had given a final shake to the
bed in the corner, upon which her bonnet and shawl had been lying. She
put them on neatly and primly; and when she was ready to go she spoke
again in a constrained and mysterious manner.

"Heard nothing of Susan, I suppose?" she said.

"Not a word," answered old Oliver, sadly. "It's the only trouble I've
got. That were the last passion I ever went into, and I was hot and
hasty, I know."

"So you always used to be at times," said his sister.

"Ah! but that passion was the worst of all," he went on, speaking
slowly. "I told her if she married young Raleigh, she should never darken
my doors again--never again. And she took me at my word though she might
have known it was nothing but father's hot temper. Darken my doors! Why,
the brightest sunshine I could have 'ud be to see her come smiling into
my shop, lik