uble, flowery-tongued, foolish young assistant,
evidently caught haphazard to fill the place which Mr. Cardross, during
a long term of years, had never vacated, except at communion seasons.
It gave his faithful friend and pupil a sensation almost of pain to see
any new figure there, and not the dear old minister's, with his long
white hair, his earnest manner, and his simple, short sermon. Shorter
and simpler the older he grew, till he often declared he should end by
preaching like the beloved apostle John, who, tradition says, in his
latter days, did nothing but repeat, over and over again, to all around
him, his one exhortation--he, the disciple whom Jesus loved--

"Little children, love one another."

On inquiry after service, the earl found that Mr. Cardross had been
ailing all week, and had had on Saturday to procure in haste this
substitute. But, on going to the Manse, the earl found him much as
usual, only complaining of a numbness in his arm.

"And," he said, with a composure very different from his usual
nervousness about the slightest ailment, "Now I remember, my mother died
of paralysis. I wish Helen would come home."

"Shall she be sent for?" suggested Lord Cairnforth.

"Oh no--not the least necessity. Besides, she says she is coming."

"She has long said that."

"But now she is determined to make the strongest effort to be with us at
the New Year. Read her letter--it came yesterday; a week later than
usual. I should have sent it up to the Castle, for it troubled me a
little, especially the postscript; can you make it out? part of it is
under the seal. It is in answer to what I told her of Duncan; he was
always her pet, you know. How she used to carry him about the garden,
even when he grew quite a big boy! Poor Helen!"

While the minister went on talking, feebly and wanderingly, in a way
that at another time would have struck the earl as something new and
rather alarming, Lord Cairnforth eagerly read the letter. It ended
thus:

"Tell Dunnie I am awfully glad he is to be a minister. I hope all my
brothers will settle down in dear old Scotland, work hard, and pay their
way like honest men. And bid them, as soon as ever they can, to marry
honest women--good, loving Scotch lassies--no fremd (archaic:
strange, foreign) folk. Tell them never to fear for 'poortith cauld,'
as Mr. Burns wrote about; it's easy to bear, when it's honest poverty.
I would rather see my five brothers living on por