ain
fell into a sleep, out of which he passed quietly and without pain into
sleep eternal. They looked at him, and he was still breathing; they
looked at him a few minutes after, and he was, as Mr. Cardross would
have expressed it, "away"--far, far away--in His safe keeping with
whom abide the souls of both the righteous and the wicked, the living
and the dead.

Let Him judge him, for no one else ever did. No one ever spoke of him
but as their dead can only be spoken of either to or by the widow and
the fatherless.

Without much difficulty--for, after her husband's death, Helen's
strength suddenly collapsed, and she became perfectly passive in the
earl's hands and in those of Mrs. Campbell--Lord Cairnforth learned
all he required about the circumstances of the Bruce family.

They were absolutely penniless. Helen's boy had been born only a day or
two after their arrival at Edinburg. Her husband's illness increased
suddenly at the last, but he had not been quite incapacitated till she
had gained a little strength, so as to be able to nurse him. But how
she had done it--how then and for many months past she had contrived
to keep body and soul together, to endure fatigue, privation, mental
anguish, and physical weakness, was, according to good Mrs. Campbell,
who heard and guessed a great deal more than she chose to tell, "just
wonderful'." It could only be accounted for by Helen's natural vigor of
constitution, and by that preternatural strength and courage which
Nature supplies to even the saddest form of motherhood.

And now her brief term of wifehood--she had yet not been married two
years--was over forever, and Helen Bruce was left a mother only. It
was easy to see that she would be one of those women who remain such--
mothers, and nothing but mothers, to the end of their days.

"She's ower young for me to say it o' her," observed Mrs. Campbell, in
one of the long consultations that she and the earl held together
concerning Helen, who was of necessity given over almost exclusively to
the good woman's charge; "but ye'll see, my lord, she will look nae mair
at any mortal man. She'll just spend her days in tending that wean o'
hers--and a sweet bit thing it is, ye ken--by-and-by she'll get
blithe and bonnie again. She'll be aye gentle and kind, and no dreary,
but she'll never marry. Puir Miss Helen! She'll be ane o' thae widows
that the apostle tells o'--that are 'widows indeed'."

And Mrs. Campbell, who h