Thanking them for the sympathy they had shown for our sufferings, I advised them, for the present, to return to their own homes. This they did; but with a fire in their souls, and from many a formerly silent hearth to send up that night an avenging cry in the ears of heaven. I now hastened once more to the side of my mother. Alison was still insensible-they had laid her in the bed, from which she was never to come down. Need I say that Knockdailie was that day a house of mourning. Once more a voice was heard, as in Ramah, "weeping and lamentation-Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were not." As if sympathising with her "whose sun had gone down while it was yet day," the sun had withdrawn its light; the clouds that had for several hours hung in the heavens, like so many torn and bloody banners, were now seen moving in sable and stupendous masses, till at last, mingling into one, as with a covering of sackcloth, they shrouded the sky; the winds rose; wailing at first mournfully but softly, till at last their voice, as it came rushing from the glen, resembled the shriekings of the sea. Sick and sad, I rose and went out. The tempest was to me a relief-the war in the elements without, accorded but too well with the war within. I went forth into the storm. I wrestled and groped my way to the water side. I sought out the spot on which Alison had knelt. threw myself on the ground. I tried to weep; but the tears that in earlier days a word—a look -a thought-the tone even of a voice would have caused to flow, were now dried up like a brook in the heat of summer. My head that had been as a fountain of waters, seemed on a I I rose sudden to have become a furnace of fire. to my knees, and sought for refuge and relief in prayer. What lies on the heart most, will come to the lips first. Alison's recovery I made the matter of earnest supplication; the little freedom, however, which I had in praying for this, was to me a distinct intimation that she was not to recover. As I continued to pray, new light continued to dawn; considerations of the divine sovereignty, justice, wisdom, and glory, were borne in upon me with such weight as to absorb every other. My self-will was slain-or rather, it was swallowed up and lost in the will of God, so that ere ever I was aware, the tempest within was turned into a calm. Thus premonished, and in some measure prepared for what God had prepared for me, I rose from my knees and went in. My mother was sitting at the bed-side, as I had left her. I looked inquiringly into her face. From her look, I saw there was nothing to hope. I knelt by her side in silence. She neither wept nor wailed; but neither tears nor words of wail were necessary to tell me the agony of heart she was enduring her looks were sufficient. Though incapable of holding communion with the world to which she still belonged, was Alison communing with the world on the borders of which she already stood? Was she breathing its golden air? Was she beholding its beatific visions? Was she listening to the harpings and the hymns with which the majestic arches of heaven do evermore ring? Did bands of blessed angels stand in silent beauty at her feet? Did they point to the abodes of bliss, and, whispering in her ear, say-" Sister spirit, we have come to lead thee thither: yonder world is your home, and yon 'white-robed throngs are your kindred. Sister, come with us, come." We heard no such angel voices-we saw no such angel forms; but that such voices stole upon the ear, and that such visions streamed upon the eye of our dying one, we no more doubted that evening, than we doubted our own existence. "We have come," says the apostle, "to an innumerable company of angels, and are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who are heirs of salvation." Thus also writes one of our own poets "How oft do they their silvery bowers leave, We had now kept our silent and sorrowful watch till past midnight. A light occasionally broke upon her countenance; we heard our names breathed by her in low, but clear and distinct whispers; smiles of unearthly beauty played upon her lips; one of her hands was clasped in my mother's, the other lay upon her breast; she now raised it to her forehead-she opened her large, lustrous, and star-like eyes; for a moment she fixed them full upon me, then slowly and lingeringly she withdrew them, and fixed them on her mother. Her look was one of unutterable tenderness; of a whole heart'sof a whole life's condensed affection-of an unchanging and undying love-love such as a look, the soul's best interpreter, only could express. It was her last as if a voice had been heard by 1 . her calling her away, her eyes she now raised upwards, her snow-white hands she clasped closely together, and laid them on her breast, and thus, silent and serene, without a struggle and without a sigh, she departed. "O Alison Welwood -my beloved sister-my beloved sister;" years have now elapsed since I uttered these words over her beautiful but breathless clay. With a spirit scarcely less sorrowful, I utter them still. The wound which her death opened still bleeds -the fountain of tears which it unsealed still flows-her loss I still mourn. The tears I shed then and now, I need scarcely say, were not on her account. She died, it is true, in the "liquid dew" and bloom of life; but though young in years, she was old in grace-she was ripe for heaven. Besides, as Mr. Rutherford writes in one of his precious "Letters"-"Sown corn is not lost, and a going down star is not annihilate. If she has casten her bloom and flower, it is into Christ's lap. The good husbandman may pluck his roses and gather in his lilies at midsummer, and for aught I dare say, in the beginning of the first month in summer. may transplant the young trees out of the lower ground to the higher, and when he does so, it is always for their good, that they may have freer air and more of the sun." Thus has He transplanted her-and thus, while I am left to droop and wither in the cold outfield of time, she is expanding her leaves to the sun in the palace gardens of eternity. He 172 CHAPTER XI. MR. WELSH ARRIVES AT KNOCKDAILIE. TERRIFIC as had been the close of the preceding day, and wild as had been the night on which Alison died, the sun never rose in greater splendour than it did the following morning. It brought back more than usual brightness to the sky, and more than usual beauty to the glen, which sparkled like a sea of light; but it brought back no brightness-it shone with no beauty to those who, with dim eyes and desolate hearts, sat in the darkened chambers of Knockdailie. When all was over, and the "mourning women" had entered to do their last and sad office to the dead, I withdrew to my own room, and, weak, weary, and worn as I was, I soon fell asleep. In these two hours' sleep, I seemed to live over the whole of my past life. Once more I seemed to sit by the household hearth, as, in the days of childhood, it was surrounded by the bright unbroken household band: my father, my mother, Alison, and Mr. Traill. Once more I gazed in their faces, which seemed brighter, and listened to their voices, which seemed sweeter even than in the days of old. Now the scene changed from the house to the hills, the glens and the streams. Alison alone now stood beside me-a shape of speechless beauty, her looks radiant with liquid light and love, and her voice of the most won |