at of many
a cottage bearing the same solemn message of sudden death, to which
there could be but one answer--"Thy will be done."

But the particulars of that terrible interview, in which he had to tell
the countess what already her own eyes had witnessed--though they
refused to believe the truth--the minister never repeated to any
creature except his wife. And afterward, during the four weeks that
Lady Cairnforth survived her husband, he was the only person, beyond her
necessary attendants, who saw her until she died.

The day after her death he was suddenly summoned to the castle by Mr.
Menteith, an Edinburg writer to the signet, and confidential agent, or
factor, as the office called in Scotland, to the late earl.

"They'll be sending for you to baptize the child. It's early--but
the pair bit thing may be delicate, and they may want it done at once,
before Mr. Menteith returns to Edinburg."

"Maybe so, Helen; so do not expect me back till you see me."

Thus saying, the minister quitted his sunshiny manse garden, where he
was working peacefully among his raspberry-bushes, with his wife looking
on, and walked, in meditative mood, through the Cairnforth woods, now
blue with hyacinths in their bosky shadows, and in every nook and corner
starred with great clusters of yellow primroses, which in this part of
the country grow profusely, even down to within a few feet of high-water
mark, on the tidal shores of the lochs. Their large, round, smiling
faces, so irresistibly suggestive of baby smiles at sight of them, and
baby fingers clutching at them, touched the heart of the good minister,
who had left two small creatures of his own--a "bit girlie" of five,
and a two-year-old boy--playing on his grass-plot at home with some
toys of the countess's giving: she had always been exceedingly kind to
the Manse children.

He thought of her, lying dead; and then of her poor little motherless
and fatherless baby, whom, if she had any consciousness in her
death-hour, it must have been a sore pang to her to leave behind. And
the tears gathered again and again in the good man's eyes, shutting out
from his vision all the beauty of the spring.

He reached the grand Italian portico, built by some former earl with a
taste for that style, and yet harmonizing well with the smooth lawn,
bounded by a circle of magnificent trees, through which came glimpses of
the glittering loch. The great doors used almost always to stand open,
and