ll you do? You cannot live here alone, and my
annuity dies with me. Bessie, oh, Bessie, you will not pursue your
mother's course?"

"Never! so help me Heaven!" Bessie answered, as she fell on her knees
beside him, and bowed her face in her hands.

Surely in this extremity she might tell him of her engagement to Neil,
and after a moment she said:

"Father, don't let a thought of my future trouble you. That is provided
for. I am to be Neil's wife. We settled that last Christmas, but he did
not wish me to tell you till something definite was arranged. He meant
you to live with us. We were not to be separated; he is very kind," she
added, earnestly, as she felt her father's surprise and possible
disapprobation in his silence.

"And you love him? You believe he will make you happy?" Archie said, at
last, and Bessie replied:

"I love him; and I believe he will make me as happy as I can be with you
gone. Oh, father, you don't like Neil! You never did."

There was reproach in Bessie's voice, as she said this, and the sick
man answered her:

"There are many noble traits in Neil's character, but he is a McPherson,
with all their foolish pride of birth, and blood, and ancestors. As if
paupers like us have any right to such nonsense! Were I to live my life
again, I would turn a hand-organ in the street to earn my bread if there
were no other way. Yes, Neil is very nice and good, but not the husband
I would have chosen for you. I liked the others better, Mr. Trevellian,
and the American--what is his name?"

"Jerrold, Grey Jerrold," Bessie replied, and after a moment her father
continued:

"Where is Neil? His place is here with you, if he is to be your husband.
Send for him at once; there is no time to lose. You must not be alone,
and the hours are very few, and the birds are singing so loud; send for
Neil at once."

Bessie did not know where Neil was now, as the last time she heard from
him he was in Paris, with his mother and Blanche; but she would take the
chance that he was at home, and a telegram that her father was dying and
he must come immediately was soon speeding along the wires to Trevellian
House, in London.

Slowly the hours of that glorious summer day went by, and Archie's pulse
grew fainter and his voice weaker, while the real birds without in the
yews, and in the hedge-rows, and the imaginary birds within, sang louder
and clearer, and the dying man listened to them with a rapt look in his
white face, an