he turned white as a ghost and sat down trembling. Mrs.
Callender's face was twitching, and to prevent herself from crying she
burst into scorching satire. "There!" she said, sitting in her
rocking-chair and rocking herself furiously, "I ken'd weel what it would
come til! Adversity mak's a man wise, they say, if it doesna mak' him
rich. But it's the Prime Minister I blame for this. The auld dolt! he
must be fallen to his dotage. It's enough to mak' a reasonable body go
out of her mind to think of sic wise asses. I told you what to expect,
but you were always miscalling me for a suspicious auld woman. Oh, it's a
thing ye'd no suspect; but Jane Callender is only a daft auld fool, ye
see, and doesna ken what she's saying!"

But at the next moment she had jumped up and flung her arms about John's
neck, and was crying over him like a girl. "Oh, my son! my ain son! And
is it for me to fling out at ye? Aye, aye, it's a heartless world,
laddie!"

He kissed the old woman, and then she tried to coax him to eat. "Come,
come, a wee bittie, just a wee bittie. We must eat our supper anyway."

"God seems dead and heaven a long way off!" he murmured.

"And a drap o' whisky will do no harm--a wee drappie."

"There's only one thing clear--God sees I'm unfit for the work, so he has
taken it away from me."

She turned aside from the table, and the supper was left untouched.

* * * * *

The first post next morning brought a letter from Glory.

"The Garden House,

"Clement's Inn, W. C.

"Forgive me! I have returned to town! I couldn't help it, I couldn't, I
couldn't! London dragged me back. What was I to do after everything was
settled and the aunties provided for?--assist in a dame's school and wage
war with pothooks and hangers? Oh! I was dying of weariness--dying,
dying, dying!

"And then they made me such tempting offers. Not the music hall--don't
think that. I dare say you were quite right there. No, but the theatre,
the regular theatre! Mr. Drake has bought some broken-down old place, and
is to turn it into a beautiful theatre expressly for me. I am to play
Juliet. Only think--Juliet!--and in my own theatre! Already I feel like a
liberated slave who has crossed her Red Sea.

"And don't think a woman's mourning is like the silly old laws which
lasted but three days. _He_ is buried in my heart, not in the earth, and
I shall love him and revere him always! And then didn't you tell me
yours