g and of loud lament. The three lay, side by side, with their pale
faces up to heaven. Dora, for that is the name tradition has handed
down--Dorothea, the gift of God, lay between her Father and her Mother,
and all their hands were lovingly and peacefully entwined. No agonies
had been there--unknown what hand, human or divine, had closed their
eyelids and composed their limbs; but there they lay as if asleep, not
to be awakened by the burst of sunshine that dazzled upon their smiling
countenances, cheek to cheek, in the awful beauty of united death.

The deep religion of that troubled time had sanctified the Strangers
almost into an angelic character; and when the little kirk-bells were
again heard tinkling through the air of peace (the number of the martyrs
being complete), the beauty with which their living foreheads had been
invested, reappeared to the eyes of imagination, as the Poets whom
Nature kept to herself walked along the moonlight hills. "The Blessed
Family," which had been as a household word, appertaining to them while
they lived, now when centuries have gone by, is still full of a dim but
divine meaning; the spirit of the tradition having remained, while its
framework has almost fallen into decay.

How beautifully emerges that sun-stricken Cottage from the rocks, that
all around it are floating in a blue vapoury light! Were we so disposed,
methinks we could easily write a little book entirely about the obscure
people that have lived and died about that farm, by name LOGAN BRAES.
Neither is it without its old traditions. One May-day long ago--some two
centuries since--that rural festival was there interrupted by a
thunderstorm, and the party of youths and maidens, driven from the
budding arbours, were all assembled in the ample kitchen. The house
seemed to be in the very heart of the thunder; and the master began to
read, without declaring it to be a religious service, a chapter of the
Bible; but the frequent flashes of lightning so blinded him, that he was
forced to lay down the Book, and all then sat still without speaking a
word; many with pale faces, and none without a mingled sense of awe and
fear. The maiden forgot her bashfulness as the rattling peals shook the
roof-tree, and hid her face in her lover's bosom; the children crept
closer and closer, each to some protecting knee, and the dogs came all
into the house, and lay down in dark places. Now and then there was a
convulsive, irrepressible, but h