short disappearance, she re-entered the room with her child, who
had dropped contentedly asleep again, nestling to her bosom, she was
perfectly transformed. No longer the plain, almost elderly woman; she
had in her poor worn face the look--which makes any face young, nay,
lovely--the mother's look. Fate had not been altogether cruel to
her; it had given her a child.

"Isn't he a bonnie bairn?" she whispered, as once again she knelt down
by Lord Cairnforth's chair, and brought the little face down so that he
could see it and touch it. He did touch it with his feeble fingers--
the small soft cheek--the first baby-cheek he had ever beheld.

"It is a bonnie bairn, as you say; God bless it!" which, as she
afterward told him, was the first blessing ever breathed over the child.
"What is its name:" he asked by-and-by, seeing she expected more notice
taken of it.

"Alexander Cardross--after my father. My son is a born Scotsman too
--an Edinburg laddie. We were coming home, as fast as we could, to
Cairnforth. He"--glancing toward the bed--"he wished it."

Thus much thought for her, the dying man had shown. He had been
unwilling to leave his wife forlorn in a strange land. He had come
"fast as he could," that her child might be born and her husband die at
Cairnforth--at least so the earl supposed, nor subsequently found any
reason to doubt. It was a good thing to hear then--good to remember
afterward.

For hours the earl sat in the broken chair, with Helen and her baby
opposite, watching and waiting for the end.

It did not come till near morning. Once during the night Captain Bruce
opened his eyes and looked about him, but either his mind was confused,
or--who knows?--made clearer by the approach of death, for he
evinced no sign of surprise at the earl's presence in the room. He only
fixed upon him a long, searching, inquiring gaze, which seemed to compel
an answer.

Lord Cairnforth spoke:

"Cousin, I am come to take home with me your wife and child. Are you
satisfied?"

"Yes."

"I promise you they shall never want. I will take care of them always."

There was a faint assenting movement of the dying head, and then, just
as Helen went out of the room with her baby, Captain Bruce followed her
with his eyes, in which the earl thought was an expression almost
approaching tenderness. "Poor thing--poor thing! Her long trouble
is over."

These were the last words he ever said, for shortly afterward he ag