rd morning he went
silently away. It was full tide; the waves broke softly on the
shingle, and the sea-birds on the lonely rocks were crying for
their meat from God. Suddenly the sunshine filled the cabin, and
David was aware of something more than the morning breeze coming
through the wide-open door. A sense of lofty _presence_ filled the
place. "It is the flitting," he said with a great awe; and he stood
up with bowed head until a feeling of indescribable loneliness
testified that the soul which had hitherto dwelt with him was gone
away forever.

He went then to the body. Death had given it dignity and grandeur. It
was evident that in Liot's case the great change had meant victory
and not defeat. Almost for the first time in his life David kissed
his father. Then he went into Uig and told the minister, and said
simply to his mates, "My father is dead." And they answered:

"It is a happy change for him, David. Is it to-morrow afternoon you
would like us to come?"

And David said: "Yes; at three o'clock the minister will be there."

He declined all companionship; he could wake alone with the dead.
For the most part he sat on the door-step and watched the rising and
setting of the constellations, or walked to and fro before the open
door, ever awfully aware of that outstretched form, the house of
clay in which his father and companion had dwelt so many years at
his side. Sometimes he slept a little with his head against the post
of the door, and then the sudden waking in the starlight made him
tremble.

He had thought this night would be a session of solemnity never
to be forgotten; but he found himself dozing and his thoughts
drifting, and it was only by an effort that he could compel anything
like the attitude he desired. For we cannot kindle when we will
the sacred fire of the soul. And David was disappointed in his
spiritual experience, and shocked at what he called his coldness and
indifference, which, after all, were not coldness and indifference,
but the apathy of exhausted feeling and physical weariness.

The next afternoon there was a quiet gathering in the cabin that
had been Liot's, and a little prayer and admonition; then, in the
beauteous stillness of the summer day, the fishers made a bier of
their crossed oars, and David laid his father upon it. There was no
coffin; the long, majestic figure of humanity was only folded close
in a winding-sheet and his own blue blanket. So, by the sea-shore,
as the