een thinking of it all last night, and feel as if my heart were
turning into stone. But when I am alone, it is always so. There is a
cold death-like weight at my breast that makes me unhappy, though, when
I come to you, and we speak together, the feeling passes away, and I
become cheerful."

"Ah, my bairn," replied the old woman; "I fear I'm no your friend,
meikle as I love you. We speak owre, owre often o' the lost; for our
foolish hearts find mair pleasure in that than in anything else; but ill
does it fit us for being alone. Weel do I ken your feeling--a stone
deadness o' the heart, a feeling there are no words to express, but that
seems as it were insensibility itself turning into pain; an' I ken, too,
my lassie, that it is nursed by the very means ye take to flee from it.
Ye maun learn to think mair o' the living and less o' the dead. Little,
little does it matter, how a puir worn-out creature like me passes the
few broken days o' life that remains to her; but ye are young, my Helen,
an' the world is a' before you; an' ye maun just try an' live for it."

"To-morrow," rejoined Helen, "is Earnest's birthday. Is it no strange
that, when our minds make pictures o' the dead, it is always as they
looked best, an' kindest, an' maist life-like. I have been seeing
Earnest all night long, as when I saw him on his _last_ birthday; an',
oh, the sharpness o' the pang, when, every now an' then, the back o' the
picture is turned to me, an' I see him as he is--dust!"

The widow grasped her young friend by the hand. "Helen," she said, "you
will get better when I am taken from you; but, so long as we continue to
meet, our thoughts will aye be running the one way. I had a strange
dream last night, an' must tell it you. You see yon rock to the east, in
the middle o' the little bay, that now rises through the back draught o'
the sea, like the hull o' a ship, an' is now buried in a mountain o'
foam. I dreamed I was sitting on that rock, in what seemed a bonny
summer's morning; the sun was glancin' on the water; an' I could see the
white sand far down at the bottom, wi' the reflection o' the little
wavies running o'er it in long curls o' gowd. But there was no way o'
leaving the rock, for the deep waters were round an' round me; an' I saw
the tide covering one wee bittie after another, till at last the whole
was covered. An' yet I had but little fear; for I remembered that baith
Earnest an' William were in the sea afore me; an' I had th