else should I do with it?" was Lord
Cairnforth's answer. "But, in order to get at the money, and alter my
will, so that in no case should this sum be paid twice over, to the
injury of my heir--I must take care of my heir," and he slightly
smiled, "I ought to go at once to Edinburg. Shall I?"

Helen hesitated. The earl's last journey had been so unpropitious--
he had taken so long a time to recover from it--that she had
earnestly hoped he would never attempt another. She expressed this as
delicately as she could.

"No, I never would have attempted it for myself. Change is only pain
and weariness to me. I have no wish to leave dear, familiar Cairnforth
till I leave it for--the place where my good old friend is now. And
sometimes, Helen, I fancy the hills of Paradise will not be very unlike
the hills about our loch. You would think of me far away, when you were
looking at them sometimes?"

Helen fixed her tender eyes upon him--"It is quite as likely that you
may have to think of me thus, for I may go first; I am the elder of us
two. But all that is in God's hands alone. About Edinburg now. When
should you start?"

"At once, I think; though, with my slow traveling, I should not be in
time for the funeral; and even if I were, I could not attend it without
giving much trouble to other people. But, as your father has shown me,
the funeral does not signify. The great matter is to be of use to Mrs.
Menteith and the children in the way I explained. Have I your consent,
my dear!"

For an answer, Helen pointed to a few lines in a Bible which lay open on
the library table: no doubt her father had been reading out of it, for
it was open at that portion which seems to have plumbed the depth of all
human anguish--the Book of Job. She repeated the verses:

"'When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me,
it gave witness to me;

"'Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him
that had none to help him:

"'The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I
caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.'

"That is what will be said of you one day, Lord Cairnforth. Is not this
something worth living for?"

"Ay, it is!" replied the earl, deeply moved; and Helen was scarcely less
so.

They discussed no more the journey to Edinburg; but Lord Cairnforth, in
his decided way, gave orders immediately to prepare for it, taking with
him, as usual, Malcolm and Mrs. C