of the window-sill. As
he had expected, though it was long past midnight, his mother was not
yet in bed. She was folding a white cloth over her bosom, and about her,
on the backs of chairs, there were other such cloths, drying by the
fire. He watched her curiously; once he seemed to hear a whimpering
moan. When she buttoned her dress above the cloth, she gazed sadly at
the dying embers--the look of one who has gained short respite from a
task of painful tendance on the body, yet is conscious that the task and
the pain are endless, and will have to be endured, to-morrow and
to-morrow, till she dies. It was the fixed gaze of utter weariness and
apathy. A sudden alarm for his mother made John cry her name.

She flew to the door, and in a moment had him in her arms. He told his
news, and basked in her adoration.

She came close to him, and "John," she said in a smiling whisper,
big-eyed, "John," she breathed, "would ye like a dram?" It was as if she
was propounding a roguish plan in some dear conspiracy.

He laughed. "Well," he said, "seeing we have won the Raeburn, you and I,
I think we might."

He heard her fumbling in the distant pantry. He smiled to himself as he
listened to the clinking glass, and, "By Jove," said he, "a mother's a
fine thing!"

"Where's Janet?" he asked when she returned. He wanted another
worshipper.

"Oh, she gangs to bed the moment it's dark," his mother complained, like
one aggrieved. "She's always saying that she's ill. I thocht when she
grew up that she might be a wee help, but she's no use at all. And I'm
sure, if a' was kenned, I have more to complain o' than she has. Atweel
ay," she said, and stared at the embers.

It rarely occurs to young folk who have never left their homes that
their parents may be dying soon; from infancy they have known them as
established facts of nature like the streams and hills; they expect them
to remain. But the young who have been away for six months are often
struck by a tragic difference in their elders on returning home. To
young Gourlay there was a curious difference in his mother. She was
almost beautiful to-night. Her blue eyes were large and glittering, her
ears waxen and delicate, and her brown hair swept low on her blue-veined
temples. Above and below her lips there was a narrow margin of the
purest white.

"Mother," he said anxiously, "you're not ill, are ye? What do ye need so
many wee clouts for?"

She gasped and started. "They're just a