e, till one
day he, too, was laid beneath the yew trees in the churchyard. From that
deep shadow she came forth, bearing her cross of service to her kind,
to live a life fragrant with the airs of Heaven, in fellowship with Him
who, for love of man, daily gave Himself to die.

It was through her nephew, Alan Ruthven, artist and poet, pure of heart
and clean of life, that Jack Charrington came to know Ruthven Hall and
its dwellers. The young men first met in London, and later in Edinburgh,
where both were pursuing their professions with a devotion that did not
forbid attention to sundry social duties, or prevent them from taking
long walks over the Lammermuirs on Saturday afternoons. To Ruthven
Hall, Alan was permitted to bring his young Canadian friend, who, he was
secretly convinced, stood sorely in need of just such benediction as
his saintly aunt could bestow. The day of Jack Charrington's coming to
Ruthven Hall was the birthday of his better life, when he had a vision
of his profession in the light of that great ministry to the world's
sick and wounded and weary by Him who came to the world "to heal." In
another sense, too, it was for him the beginning of days, for it was
the day on which his eyes first fell upon sunny, saucy Maisie Ruthven.
Thenceforth the orbit of Jack's life swung round Ruthven Hall, and thus
it fell that when, on one of his visits to the great metropolis, he
found Iola exhausted after her season's triumphs and forbidden to sing
again for a year, and so well-nigh heart-broken, he bethought him of
the little valley of rest in the far western Highlands. Straightway
he confided to Lady Ruthven his concern for his co-patriot and friend,
giving as much of her story as he thought it well that both Lady Ruthven
and her daughter should know. Hence, when they went north to their
Highland valley again, they carried with them Iola, to be rested and
nursed, and to be healed in heart, too, if that could be. For Lady
Ruthven, with her eyes made keen by grief and love, had not been long
in discovering that, with Iola, the deeper sickness was that which no
physician's medicine can reach.

Through the early summer they waited for signs of returning health to
their guest, but neither the most watchful care nor the most tender
nursing could keep the strength from gradually waning.

"She is fretting her heart out. That's the chief cause of this terrible
restlessness," said Alan Ruthven to his friend, who was visiti