nd those who worked all day could not watch at
night. She was quite well--a little thin and pale--"bleached," her aunt
said, by being in the house and not out in the harvest-field; but she
was always alert and cheerful.

The coming sorrow was more hers than any of the others. They all
thought with dismay of the time when Shenac should be alone, with half
her heart in the grave of Hamish. But she did not look beyond the end
to that time, and sought no sympathy because of this.

It is a happy, thing that they who bear the burdens of others by this
means lighten their own; and Shenac, careful for her young brothers and
little Flora, anxious that the few hushed moments in their brother's
room--his prayers, his loving words, his gentle patience, his immortal
hope--should henceforth be blended with all their inward life, never to
be forgotten, never to be set aside, thought more of them than of
herself through all those days and nights of waiting.

When a sudden shower or a rainy day gave the harvesters a little
leisure, she used to make herself busy in the house that Dan might feel
himself of use to Hamish, and might hear, with no one else to listen, a
sweet, persuasive word or two from his dying brother's lips.

For Shenac's heart yearned over her brother Dan. He did so need some
high aim, some powerful motive of action, some strengthening, guiding
principle of life. All need this; but Dan more than others, she
thought. If he did not go straight to the mark, he would go very far
astray. He would soon be his own master, free to guide himself, and he
would either do very well or very ill in life; and there had been times,
even since the coming home of Allister, when Shenac feared that "very
ill" it was to be.

And yet at one time he had seemed not very far from the kingdom. During
all the long season of religious interest, no one had seemed more
interested, in one way, than he. Without professing to be personally
earnest in the matter, he had attended all the meetings, and watched--
with curiosity, perhaps, but with awe and interest too--the coming out
from the world of many of his companions, their changed life, their
higher purpose. But all this had passed away without any real change to
himself, and, as a reaction from that time, Dan had grown a little more
than careless--very willing to be called careless, and more, by some who
grieved, and by others who laughed.

So Shenac watched and prayed, and forgot h