is impaired.'

At this hope the daughters caught eagerly. They were plain women, narrow
and dull, but their mother had been no ordinary woman; her power of love
had created in them an affection for her which transcended ordinary
filial affection. They had inherited from her such strong domestic
feelings that they felt her defection from all family ties for the sake
of the absent father and brothers, felt it with a poignancy which the
use and wont of those winter months did not seem to blunt.

No sudden shock or fit came to bring about the end. Gradually the old
dame's strength failed. There came an hour in the spring time--it was
the midnight hour of an April night--when she lay upon her bed, sitting
up high against white pillows, gasping for the last breaths that she
would ever draw. They had drawn aside the old-fashioned bed-curtains, so
that they hung like high dark pillars at the four posts. They had opened
wide the windows, and the light spring wind blew through the room fresh
with the dews of night. Outside, the moon was riding among her clouds;
the night was white. The budding trees shook their twigs together in the
garden. Inside the room, firelight and lamplight, each flickering much
because of the wind, mingled with the moonlight, but did not wholly
obscure its misty presence. They all stood there--the minister, the
doctor, the grey-haired daughters sobbing, looking and longing for one
glance of recognition, the nurse, and the new maid.

They all knelt, while the minister said a prayer.

'She's looking differently now,' whispered the home-keeping daughter.
She had drawn her handkerchief from her eyes, and was looking with awed
solicitude at her mother's face.

'Yes, there's a change coming,' said the married daughter; her large
bosom heaved out the words with excited emotion.

'Speak to her of my father--it will bring her mind back again,' they
appealed to the minister, pushing him forward to do what they asked.

The minister took the lady's hands in his, and spoke out clearly and
strongly in her ear; but he spoke not, at first, of husband or children,
but of the Son of God.

Memories that had lain asleep so long seemed slowly to awaken for one
last moment.

'You know what I am saying, auntie?' The minister spoke strongly, as to
one who was deaf.

There was a smile on the handsome old face.

'Ay, I know weel: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shallna want ... though I
walk through the valley o' the shad