d, Mrs. Hope sprang forward--

"Father!"

"Eh? Father? What is this?"

"Father, it is Colin."

Then he knew it all. Colin stretched out a feeble hand towards him. He
was sorely bruised and hurt, he was white and helpless and death-like.

"Father!"

And the father knelt down beside him. Wife and friend walked softly
away. In the solemn moment when these two long-parted souls met again
there was no other love that could inter-meddle.

"My dear father--forgive me!"

Then the laird kissed his recovered son, and said tenderly,

"Son Colin, you are all I have, and all I have is yours."

"Father, my wife and son."

Then the old man proudly and fondly kissed Hope Crawford too, and he
clasped the little lad in his arms. He was well pleased that Hope had
thought it worth while to minister to his comfort, and let him learn
how to know her fairly.

"But it was your doing, Tallisker, I ken it was; it has your mark on
it." And he grasped his old friend's hand with a very hearty grip.

"Not altogether, laird. Colin had gone to Rome on business, and you
were in sair discomfort, and I just named it to Mrs. Hope. After a' it
was her proposal. Naebody but a woman would hae thought o' such a way
to win round you."

Perhaps it was well that Colin was sick and very helpless for some
weeks. During them the two men learned to understand and to respect
each other's peculiarities. Crawford himself was wonderfully happy; he
would not let any thought of the past darken his heart. He looked
forward as hopefully as if he were yet on the threshold of life.

O mystery of life! from what depths proceed thy comforts and thy
lessons! One morning at very early dawn Crawford awoke from a deep
sleep in an indescribable awe. In some vision of the night he had
visited that piteous home which memory builds, and where only in sleep
we walk. Whom had he seen there? What message had he received? This he
never told. He had been "spoken to."

Tallisker was not the man to smile at any such confidence. He saw no
reason why God's messengers should not meet his children in the
border-land of dreams. Thus he had counselled and visited the
patriarchs and prophets of old. He was a God who changeth not; and if
he had chosen to send Crawford a message in this way, it was doubtless
some special word, for some special duty or sorrow. But he had really
no idea of what Crawford had come to confess to him.

"Tallisker, I hae been a man in a sair strait for