ted, for I cannot stand women's tears. Thou'rt just
worn out with the shaking and the want of food.'

Lois brushed away her tears, and looking round to try and divert her
thoughts by fixing them on present object, she caught her cousin
Manasseh's deep-set eyes furtively watching her. It was with no
unfriendly gaze, yet it made Lois uncomfortable, particularly as he did
not withdraw his looks after he must have seen that she observed him.
She was glad when her aunt called her into an inner room to see her
uncle, and she escaped from the steady observance of her gloomy, silent
cousin.

Ralph Hickson was much older than his wife, and his illness made him
look older still. He had never had the force of character that Grace,
his spouse, possessed, and age and sickness had now rendered him almost
childish at times. But his nature was affectionate, and stretching out
his trembling arms from where he lay bedridden, he gave Lois an
unhesitating welcome, never waiting for the confirmation of the missing
letter before he acknowledged her to be his niece.

'Oh! 'tis kind in thee to come all across the sea to make acquaintance
with thine uncle; kind in Sister Barclay to spare thee!'

Lois had to tell him that there was no one living to miss her at home
in England; that in fact she had no home in England, no father nor
mother left upon earth; and that she had been bidden by her mother's
last words to seek him out, and ask him for a home. Her words came up,
half choked from a heavy heart, and his dulled wits could not take
their meaning in without several repetitions; and then he cried like a
child, rather at his own loss of a sister, whom he had not seen for
more than twenty years, than at that of the orphan's standing before
him, trying hard not to cry, but to start bravely in this new strange
home. What most of all helped Lois in her self-restraint was her aunt's
unsympathetic look. Born and bred in New England, Grace Hickson had a
kind of jealous dislike to her husband's English relations, which had
increased since of late years his weakened mind yearned after them, and
he forgot the good reason he had had for his self-exile, and moaned
over the decision which had led to it as the great mistake of his life.
'Come,' said she, 'it strikes me that, in all this sorrow for the loss
of one who died full of years, ye are forgetting in Whose hands life
and death are!'

True words, but ill-spoken at that time. Lois looked up at her wi