e very much alike, as twins very often are--that
is, they were both fair, and had the same-coloured hair and eyes. But,
while Shenac was rosy and strong, the very picture of health, her
brother was thin and pale, and often of late there had been a look of
pain on his face that it made his mother's heart ache to see. They were
all in all to each other--Shenac and Hamish. They missed Lewis less on
this account, and they knew very little of the troubles that so often
made their father and mother anxious; and the first months of winter
passed happily over them after Lewis went away.

Christmas passed, and the new year came in. A few more pleasant weeks
went by, and then there came terrible tidings to the house of Angus
Bhan. Far away, on one of the rapids of the Grand River, a boat had
been overturned. Three young men had been lost under the ice. The body
of one had been recovered: it was the body of Lewis MacIvor.

"We should be thankful that we can at least bring him home," said Angus
Bhan to his wife, while she made preparations for his sad journey. But
he said it with very pale, trembling lips, and his wife struggled to
restrain the great burst of weeping that threatened to have way, that he
might have the comfort of thinking that she was bearing her trouble
well. But when she was left alone all these sad days of waiting, she
was ready to say, in the bitterness of her heart, that there was no
sorrow like her sorrow. One son was a wanderer, another was dead, and
on the face of the dearly-beloved Hamish was settling the look of
habitual suffering, so painful to see. Her cup of sorrow was full to
the brim, she declared, but she knew not what she said.

For, when a few days had passed, there were brought home for burial two
dead bodies instead of one. Her husband was no more. He had nearly
accomplished his sorrowful errand, when death overtook him. He had
complained to the friend who was with him of feeling cold, and had left
the sleigh to walk a mile or two to warm himself. They waited in vain
for him at the next resting-place, and when they went back to look for
him they found him lying with his face in the snow, quite dead. He had
not died from cold, the doctor said, but from heart-disease, and
probably without suffering; and this comfort the bereaved widow tried to
take to herself.

But her cup of sorrow was not full yet. The very night before the
burial was to be, the house caught fire and burned to