e easy in my
grave," she continued, "if I thought there would be nobody of all my
children to _follow me_. I have none but poor Peter's daughter and
grandson here now, and I hope you and Augustus and your sons will come
to my funeral. I hope you'll promise me faithfully, both of you, that
you'll certainly come and follow me to the grave."

A silence followed. The disappointment of both the sons was evident.

They had hoped, the younger remarked, that she might have had something
else to say.

No, she had not, she answered. Where would be the good of that? They had
written to her often enough about that.

And then she went on to repeat her request. There was nothing she would
not do for them, nothing, if they would but promise to come.

"So be it," replied the elder; "but then, you must make me a promise,
mother, in your turn."

"It isn't the land?" she inquired with humble hesitation. "I should be
agreeable to that."

"No, God forbid! What you have to promise me is, that if I come to your
funeral, you will make such a will that not one acre of the land or one
shilling you possess shall ever come to me or mine."

"And," said the other promptly, "I make the same promise, on the same
condition."

Then there was another pause, deeper and more intense than the first.
The old mother's face passed through many changes, always with an air of
cogitation and trouble; and the old sons watched her in such a suspense
of all movement, that it seemed as if they scarcely breathed.

"You sent your cards in," she said as if with sudden recollection, "to
remind me that you'd kept your father's name?"

"Nothing will ever induce either of us to change it," was the answer.

"You're very hard on me, son Dan'el," she said at last; "for you know
you was always my favourite son."

A touching thing to say to such an old man; but there was no reply.

"And I never took any pride in Peter," she continued, "he was that
undutiful; and his grandson's a mere child."

Still no reply.

"I was in hopes, if I could get speech of you, I should find you'd got
reasonable with age, Dan'el; for God knows you was as innocent of it as
the babe unborn."

Old Daniel Mortimer sighed deeply. They had been parted nearly sixty
years, but their last words and their first words had been on the same
subject; and it was as fresh in the minds of both as if only a few days
had intervened between them. Still it seemed he could find nothing to
say, and she