eas,
Oh, hail to thee, my dear, and fare-ye-weel.

Only it was in the Gaelic she sung it"

His voice, that was very weak and thin now, cracked, and no sound came
though his lips moved.

Miss Mary took a cup and wet his lips. He seemed to think it a
Communion, for again he shut his eyes, and "God," said he, "I am a
sinful man to be sitting at Thy tables, but Thou knowest the soldier's
trade, the soldier's sacrifice, and Thou art ready to forgive."

And still Gilian was in his bewilderment and fear about the open door.
Had anything come in that was there beside them at the bed? Down in the
kitchen Peggy poked the fire with less than her customary vigour, but
between her cheerful and worldly occupation and this doleful room, felt
Gilian, lay a space--a stairway full of dreads. All the stories he had
heard of Death personified came to him fast upon each other, and they
are numerous about winter fires in the Highland glens. He could fancy
almost that he saw the plaided spectre by the bedside, arms akimbo,
smiling ghastly, waiting till his prey was done with earthly
conversation. It was horrible to be the only one in that chamber to know
of the terrific presence that had entered at the door, and the boy's
mouth parched with old, remote, unreasonable fears.

They did not disappear, those childish terrors, even when a kitten
moved across the floor and began to toy with the vallance of the bed,
explaining at once the door's opening. For might not the kitten, he
thought, be more than Peggy's foundling be the other Thing disguised?
He watched its gambols at the feet of that distressed household, watched
its pawing at the fringe, turning round upon itself in playfulness,
emblem surely of the cruel heedlessness of nature.

MacGibbon moved to the window and stood beside the Paymaster, saying no
word, but looking out at the vacant street, its causeway still shining
with the rain. They were turning their backs, as it were, on a sorrow
irremediable. Miss Mary and the Cornal stood alone by the dying man. He
lay like a log but that his left hand played restlessly on the coverlet,
long in the fingers, sinewy at the wrist. Miss Mary took it in hers
and put palm to palm, and caressed the back with her other hand with an
overflowing of affection that murmured at her throat.

And now that MacGibbon did not see and the Cornal had blurred eyes upon
his brother's boyish countenance, she felt free to caress, and she laid
the poor hand