is knees before
her and sobbed in her lap--the great fellow of six feet high and
twenty years old--sobbed and prayed for forgiveness with the humility
of a child.

"Oh, mother, mother--and he has forgiven me too! To think what he
has done for me--what he is about to do--me, who have had no
father, or worse than none. Do you know, sometimes people in Edinburgh
--the Menteiths, and so on--have taunted me cruelly about my
father?"

"And what do you answer?" asked Helen, in a slow, cold voice.

"That he was my father, and that he was dead; and I bade them speak no
more about him."

"That was right, my son."

Then they were silent till Cardross burst out again.

"It is wonderful--wonderful! I can hardly believe it yet--that we
should never be poor nay more--you, mother, who have gone through so
much, and I, who thought I should have to work hard all my days for both
of us. And I will work!" cried the boy, as he tossed back his curls
and lifted up to his mother a face that in brightness and energy was the
very copy of her own, or what hers used to be. "I'll show you, and the
earl too, how hard I can work--as hard as if for daily bread. I'll
do every thing he wishes me--I'll be his right hand, as he says. I
will make a name for myself and him too--mother, you know I am to
bear his name?"

"Yes, my boy."

"And I am glad to bear it. I told him so. He shall be proud of me yet,
and you too. Oh, mother, mother, I will never vex you again."

And once more his voice broke into sobs, and Helen's too, as she clasped
him close, and felt that whatever God had taken away from her, He had
given her as much--and more.

Mother and son--widowed mother and only son--there is something in
the tie unlike all others in the world--not merely in its
blessedness, but in its divine compensations.

Helen waited till her father had retired, which he often did quite
early, for the days were growing too long for him, with whom every one
of them was numbered; and he listened to the wonderful news which his
grandson told him with the even smile of old age, which nothing now
either grieves or surprises.

"You'll not be going to live at the Castle, though, not while I am
alive, Helen?" was his first uneasy thought. But his daughter soon
quieted it, and saw him to his bed, as she did every evening, bidding
him good-night, and kissing his placid brow--placid as a child's--
just as if he had been her child instead of her father. Th