the churchyard amongst them, and he used to add with solemnity, "May many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave."

"No cares to break the long repose,

No rude alarms of raging foes,

No midnight shade, no clouded sun,
But sacred, high, eternal noon."

In great cities and large communities, how strange yet unavoidable it is to observe, that small is the space occupied by even the greatest and best of men in the public eye, and a single line in the newspaper obituary is necessarily all the commemoration given perhaps to the most graceful, accomplished, and agreeable member of society, whose wit, vivacity, and accomplishments have been the delight and ornament of every circle he adorned. Often must those who have known the dead pause over the business-like announcement of his decease, and think that little the wide world of readers can conceive how much is lost to many; when travellers in a railway carriage or members at their clubs read such a simple record as this," Died, at Cairngorum Castle, in his 40th year, Sir Evan McAlpine, Bart."

At Clanmarina that event was like the sun falling out of the firmament. Old Andrew McAlpine, the poor idiot of the village, long the willing butt of every urchin in the neighbourhood, had mustered a few rags of mourning that day to follow

the procession that took his honoured Chief to the home of death, and as some heedless children on his return uttered a passing jest upon him, he exclaimed in accents of piercing misery, while tears helplessly coursed each other down his furrowed old cheeks

"Dinna flyte me now, bairns. I could bite my heart in two for grief. This is the blackest hour you will ever see in Glenalpine. The clan and the village are orphans to-day."

"Yes!" said Mrs. Clinton to her husband when these sad words were repeated to them. "We used almost to laugh at the fanaticism of poor old Andrew's attachment to dear Sir Evan, but truly we may say of that best of men and of chiefs, as mournfully as Southey did of Kirke White, Just at that age when the painter would have wished to fix his likeness; in the fair morning of his virtues, the full spring-blossom of his hopes; just at that age hath death set the seal of eternity upon him, and the beautiful hath been made permanent.'

"It is not the tear at this moment shed,

When the turf is but newly laid o'er him,

That can tell how beloved was the soul that's fled,

Nor how deep in our hearts we deplore him.

"Tis the tear through many a long day wept,
Through a life by his loss all shaded;

'Tis the fond remembrance sadly kept
When all lighter griefs have faded."-Moore.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Oh! known the earliest and esteem'd the most,
Dear to a heart where nought is left so dear;
Though to my aching sight for ever lost,

In dreams deny me not to see thee here."-BYRON.

ALLAN, when the moving multitude, like a dark cloud, passed silently out of sight, weak as he felt, slowly sank on his knees and prayed. It was now that he experienced the Protestant comfort of pouring out his feelings to a listening Saviour; and as he did so, tears at last came to his relief, while in the prostration of agonised sorrow he thought of him who first had taught him to seek for heaven, and now was gone to point the way.

In the abject depths of his sorrow, Allan had scarcely noticed a slight noise in the room, till it was again repeated; he felt a heavy hand laid on his shoulder, and looking up with a start of astonishment, the young mourner saw before him his old tutor Mr. Talbot.

There had always been an extraordinary power in Mr. Talbot's eye over Allan on the very few occasions when that eye was allowed to speak, or even to look. The expression he threw into it now spoke the deepest commiseration for his

former pupil, but it spoke also the perfect hopelessness of such prayers as his own, and placing his hand again on the shoulder of his old scholar, with a friendliness of manner which nothing but actual rudeness could have repelled, he sat down beside Allan, and spoke to him with masterly eloquence and most plausible persuasiveness for more than an hour, during which Mr. Talbot alluded to those circumstances relating to the speaker himself, which had before filled Allan with surprise.

"You are aware," added Mr. Talbot, "that it was no ordinary inducement which allured me to become your tutor, and that no ordinary ties exist between us."

"Yet tell me," asked Allan with agitated eagerness, "duty to my uncle's memory bids me ascertain this point, before, even allowing for this important disclosure, I can continue to see you here, Mr. Talbot-Are you a papist ?"

"I understand no such designation," replied Mr. Talbot drily.

"But," continued Allan resolutely, "I must know if you belong to the Popish Church."

"Even Catholics only confess to their priest, Allan, and you are not mine," answered Mr. Talbot, rising with a look such as Allan had not seen since he was in the school-room; but no word or words could have better expressed a just indignation as

he added, "For your good I have had some concealments from you. These are now explained; if there are more, await my time to disclose them."

Allan, weakened in mind and body, found it easier now languidly to let the stream of Mr. Talbot's remarks flow through his mind, than either to resist or to stop them, and he lay back in a state of almost fainting weakness, till at length the door opened, and Lady Edith, pallid with grief and with watching, re-entered to continue her attendance on the beloved invalid.

Mr. Talbot was one of those individuals who, without ever appearing to look at anything, saw as well behind him apparently as before, and with eyes that no one could ever catch, observed everybody and everything: he became conscious therefore, at once, of Lady Edith's astonished entrance, but he did not really seem aware that another had been added to the party. Lady Edith's surprise at discovering Mr. Talbot in the room, she subdued almost immediately, not to agitate Allan, who was reclining back in his arm-chair at the window, his teeth chattering, his limbs benumbed, his whole frame shivering, and the cold tears congealed on his cheek, an image of helpless anguish.

A severe relapse brought Allan to the very verge of the grave, and long weeks passed during,. which a dry, wasting, delirious fever, which seemed rapidly consuming his very existence, made it