ough they both were by the
holy hour. At our bidding she renewed the strain that had ceased as we
met, and continued to sing it while we parted, her voice dying away in
the distance, like an angel's from a broken dream. Never heard we that
voice again, for in three little weeks it had gone, to be extinguished
no more, to join the heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer.

Did both her parents lose all love to life, when their sole daughter was
taken away? And did they die finally of broken hearts? No--such is not
the natural working of the human spirit, if kept in repair by pure and
pious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had once
been--nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far in
resignation that often wept when it did not repine--in faith that now
held a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long of
being again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's--they had
been as sisters--took her place, and filled it too, as far as the living
can ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a while
to occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom their
substance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not have
discerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but others
saw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been a
delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retired
to a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Let
him be strong as a giant, infirmities often come on the hard-working man
before you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison. He broke
down fast, we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after that
partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those who
have long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each other's
arms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones; and there is
one on which this inscription may be read--"HERE LIE THE BODIES OF ADAM
MORRISON AND OF HELEN ARMOUR HIS SPOUSE. THEY DIED ON THE 1ST OF MAY
17--. HERE ALSO LIES THE BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY MORRISON, WHO DIED
JUNE 2, 17--." The headstone is a granite slab--as they almost all are
in that kirkyard--and the kirk itself is of the same enduring material.
But touching that grave is a Marble Monument, white almost as the very
snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of death, adorned with the
armorial bearings belonging t