way round one
another and Godfrey, and there we stood sighing and swaying and
sobbing a long time, and no man saying a word.

"'Oh, man, Godfrey dear, but our father is gone, and who can talk with
you now about the Latin, and the history books, and the great
McNeils--and our mother that's gone?' says Donald; and the thought of
it was such pity that our hearts seemed like to break.

"But Godfrey said: 'We will talk together like brothers. If it shames
you for me to be like you, then I will teach you all they taught me,
and we will all be like our white father.'

"So we all agreed to have it so, if he would tell us what to do. After
that we came in here with Godfrey, and we stood looking at my father's
white face. Godfrey all alone had straked him out on this table, with
the silver-pieces on the eyes that we had feared. But the silver we
did not fear. Maybe you will not understand it, Aleck McTavish, but
our father never seemed such close kin to us as when we would look at
him dead, and at Godfrey, that was the picture of him, living and
kind.

"After that you know what happened yourself."

"Well I do, Mr. McNeil. It was Great Godfrey that was the father to
you all," said my cousin.

"Just that, Aleck McTavish. All that he had was ours to use as we
would,--his land, money, horses, this room, his learning. Some of us
could learn one thing and some of us could learn another, and some
could learn nothing, not even how to behave. What I could learn was
the playing of the fiddle. Many's the hour Godfrey would play with me
while the rest were all happy around.

"In great content we lived like brothers, and proud to see Godfrey as
white and fine, and grand as the best gentleman that ever came up to
visit him out of Montreal. Ay, in great content we lived all together
till the consumption came on Donald, and he was gone. Then it came
and came back, and came back again, till Hector was gone, and Ranald
was gone, and in ten years' time only Godfrey and I were left. Then
both of us married, as you know. But our children died as fast as they
were born, almost,--for the curse seemed on us. Then his wife died,
and Godfrey sighed and sighed ever after that.

"One night I was sleeping with the door of my room open, so I could
hear if Godfrey needed my help. The cough was on him then. Out of a
dream of him looking at my father's white face I woke and went to his
bed. He was not there at all.

"My heart went cold with fear, fo