r me. I was, however, so greatly recruited by
a night's rest in their best bed, as to be fit in the morning to be
removed, in the old man's _rung_-cart, to the house of a relation in the
parish of Nigg, from which, after a second day's rest, I was conveyed in
another cart to the Cromarty Ferry. And thus terminated the last of my
boyish visits to the Highlands.

Both my grandfather and grandmother had come of long-lived races, and
Death did not often knock at the family door. But the time when the
latter "should cross the river," though she was some six or eight years
younger than her husband, came first; and so, according to Bunyan, she
"called for her children, and told them that her hour had come." She was
a quiet, retiring woman, and, though intimately acquainted with her
Bible, not in the least fitted to make a female Professor of Theology:
she could _live_ her religion better than _talk_ it; but she now
earnestly recommended to her family the great interests once more; and,
as its various members gathered round her bed, she besought one of her
daughters to read to her, in their hearing, that eighth chapter of the
Romans which declares that "there is now no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the
Spirit." She repeated, in a sinking voice, the concluding verses,--"For
I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor
principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor
height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." And, resting
in confidence on the hope which the passage so powerfully expresses, she
slept her last sleep, in simple trust that all would be well with her in
the morning of the general awakening. I retain her wedding-ring, the
gift of Donald Roy. It is a sorely-wasted fragment, worn through on one
of the sides, for she had toiled long and hard in her household, and the
breach in the circlet, with its general thinness, testify to the fact;
but its gold is still bright and pure; and, though not much of a
relic-monger, I would hesitate to exchange it for the Holy Coat of
Treves, or for waggon-loads of the wood of the "true cross."

My grandmother's term of life had exceeded by several twelvemonths the
full threescore and ten; but when, only a few years after, Death next
visited the circle, it was on its youngest members that his hand was
laid. A dea