replied Donal. "When you and I meet, my lord--by
and by, I shall not be ashamed."

The poor man was satisfied. He sent for Davie, and told him he was
always to do as Mr. Grant wished, that he left him in his charge, and
that he must behave to him like a son.

Davie was fast making acquaintance with death--but it was not to him
dreadful as to most children, for he saw it through the face and words
of the man whom he most honoured.

CHAPTER LXXXIV.

MORVEN HOUSE.

In the evening Donal went again to the home-farm. Finding himself alone
in the drawing-room, he walked out into the old garden.

"Thank God," he said to himself, "if my wife should come here some sad,
sweet night, with a low moon-crescent, and a gently thinking wind, and
wander about the garden, it will not be to know herself forgotten!"

He went up and down the grassy paths. Once again, all as long ago--for
it seemed long now--he was joined by Miss Graeme.

"I couldn't help fancying," she said as she came up to him, "that I saw
lady Arctura walking by your side.--God forgive me! how could I be so
heartless as mention her!"

"Her name will always be pleasant in my ears," returned Donal. "I was
thinking of her--that was how you felt as if you saw her! You did not
really see anything, did you?"

"Oh, no!"

"She is nearer me than that," said Donal. "She will be with me wherever
I am; I shall never be sad. God is with me, and I do not weep that I
cannot see him: I wait; I wait."

Miss Graeme was in tears.

"Mr. Grant," she said, "she is gone a happy angel to heaven instead of
a pining woman! That is your doing! God bless you!--You will let me
think of you as a friend?"

"Always; always: you loved her."

"I did not at first; I thought of her only as a poor troubled creature!
Now I know there was more life in her trouble than in my content. I
came not only to love her, but to look up to her as a saint: if ever
there was one, it was she, Mr. Grant. She often came here after I
showed her that poem. She used to walk here alone in the twilight. That
horrid Miss Carmichael! she was the plague of her life!"

"She was God's messenger--to buffet her, and make her know her need of
him. Be sure, Miss Graeme, not a soul can do without him."

Here Mr. Graeme joined them.

"I do not think the earl will last many days," said Donal. "It would be
well, it seems to me, at once upon his death to take possession of the
house in the town. It is the only prop