he asked, in an altered tone.

"It's like to be the church bell. They're burying poor auld Matha's lass
and her wee barn this morning."

Hugh Ritson did not touch his breakfast.

"Luke, close the shutters," he said, "and bring more candles."

He did not go out that day, but continued to walk to and fro in the
darkened room. Toward nightfall he grew feverish, and rang frequently
the bell that summoned the banksman. He had only some casual order, some
message, some unimportant explanation.

At length the old man understood his purpose, and settled himself there
for the night. They talked much during the early hours, and often the
master laughed and jested. But the atmosphere that is breathed by a
sleepless man is always heavy with sleep, and in spite of his efforts to
keep awake, Luke dozed away in his chair. Then for hours there was a
gloomy silence, broken only by the monotonous footfall within and the
throb of the engine without.

The next day, Friday, the sun shone brilliantly, but the shutters of the
little house on the pit-brow remained closed, and the candle still
burned on the table. Hugh Ritson had grown perceptibly feebler, yet he
continued his dreary walk. The old banksman was forbidden to send for a
doctor, but he contrived to dispatch a messenger for Parson Christian.
That night he watched with the master again. When the conversation
failed, he sung. First, a psalm of David, "The fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God;" then a revival hymn of Charles Wesley about
ransom by Christ's blood.

It would have been a strange spectacle to strange eyes. The old
man--young still, though seventy-nine, dear to troops of dear ones,
encircled in his age by love and honor, living in poverty that was
abundance, with faith that was itself the substance of things hoped for,
his simple face ruddier and mellower than before--rocking his head and
singing in the singleness of his heart. The other man--barely thirty,
yet already old, having missed his youth, his thin cheeks pallid as
linen, his eyes burning with a somber light--alone in the world,
desolate, apart--walking with an uncertain step and a tremor of the
whole frame, which seemed to lurch for poise and balance, yet swinging
his arms with the sweep of the melody, and smiling a forced smile
through his hard and whitened lips.

When the singing ceased, Hugh Ritson paused suddenly and turned to the
old banksman.

"Luke," he said, abruptly, "I suppose there wi