"I shall never be clever, I know that," pleaded the lad, who was learning a touching humility, "but I may be useful; and oh! if you would but use me, in any thing or every thing, I'd work day and night for you —I would indeed!"

"I know you would, my son" (earl sometimes called him "my son" when they were by themselves), "and so you shall."

That evening Lord Cairnforth dictated to Helen, by her boy's hand, one of his rare letters, telling her that he and Cardross would return home in time for the latter's birthday, which would be in a month from now, and which he wished kept with all the honors customary to the coming of age of an heir of Cairnforth.

"Heir of Cairnforth!" The lad started, and stopped writing.

"It must be so, my son; I wish it. After your mother, you are my heir, and I shall honor you as such; afterward you will return here alone, and stay till the session is over; then come back, and live with me at the Castle, and fit yourself in every way to become—what I can now wholly trust you to be—the future master of Cairnforth."

And so, as soon as the earl's letter reached the peninsula, the rejoicings began. The tenantry knew well enough who the earl had fixed upon to come after him, but his was his first public acknowledgment of the fact. Helen's position, as heiress presumptive, was regarded as merely nominal; it was her son, the fine young fellow whom every body knew from his babyhood, toward whom the loyalty of the little community blazed up in a height of feudal devotion that was touching to see. The warm Scotch heart—all the warmer, perhaps, for a certain narrowness and clannishness, which in its pride would probably, nay, certainly, have shut itself up against a stranger or an inferior—opened freely to "Miss Helen's" son and the minister's grandson, a young man known to all and approved of by all.

So the festivity was planned to be just the earl's coming of age over again, with the difference between June and December, which removed the feasting-place from the lawn to the great kitchen of the Castle, and caused bonfires on the hill-tops to be a very doubtful mode of jubilation. The old folk—young then—who remembered the bright summer festival of twenty-four years ago told many a tale of that day, and how the "puir wee earl" came forward in his little chair and made his brief speech, every word and every promise of which his after life had so faithfully fulfilled.

"The heir's a wise-like lad, and a braw lad," said the old folks of the clachan, patronizingly. "He's no that ill the noo, and he'll aiblins grow the better, ye ken; but naibody that comes after will be like him. We'll ne'er see anither Earl o' Cairnforth."

The same words which Mr. Menteith and the rest had said when the earl was born, but with what a different meaning!

Lord Cairnforth came back among his own people amid a transport of welcome. Though he had been long away, Mrs. Bruce and other assistants had carried out his plans and orders so successfully that the estate had not suffered for his absence. In the whole extent of it was now little or no poverty; none like that which, in his youth, had startled Lord Cairnforth into activity upon hearing the story of the old shepherd of Loch Mhor. There was plenty of work, and hands to do it, along the shores of both lochs; new farms had sprung up, and new roads been made; churches and schools were built as occasion required; and though the sheep had been driven a little higher up the mountains, and the deer and grouse fled farther back into the inland moors, still Cairnforth village was a lovely spot, inhabited by a contented community. Civilization could bring to it no evils that were not counteracted by two strong influences—(stronger than any one can conceive who does not understand the peculiarities almost feudal in their simplicity, of country parish life in Scotland)—a minister like Mr. Cardross, and a resident proprietor like the Earl of Cairnforth.

The earl arrived a few days before the festival day, and spent the time in going over his whole property from one end to the other. He took Mrs. Bruce with him. "I can't want you for a day now, Helen," said he, and made her sit beside him in his carriage, which, by dint of various modern appliances, he could now travel in far easier than he used to do, or else asked her to drive him in the old familiar pony-chaise along the old familiar hill-side roads, whence you look down on ether loch— sometimes on both—lying like a sheet of silver below.

Man a drive they took every day, the weather being still and clam, as it often is at Cairnforth, by fits and snatches, all winter through.

"I think there never was such a place as this place," the earl would often say, when he stopped at particular points of view, and gazed his fill on every well-known outline of the hills and curve of the lochs, generally ending with a smiling look on the face beside him, equally familiar, which had watched all these things with him for more than thirty years. "Helen, I have had a happy life, or it seems so, looking back upon it. Remember, I said this, and let no one ever say the contrary."

And in all the houses they visited—farm, cottage, or bothie— every body noticed how exceedingly happy the earl looked, how cheerfully he spoke, and how full of interest he was in every thing around him.

"His lordship may live to be an auld man yet," said some one to Malcolm, and Malcolm indignantly repudiated the possibility of any thing else.

The minister was left a little lonely during this week of Lord Cairnforth's coming home, but he did not seem to feel it. He felt nothing very much now except pleasure in the sunshine and the fire, in looking at the outside of his books, now rarely opened, and in watching the bright faces around him. He was made to understand what a grand festival was to be held at Cairnforth, and the earl took especial pains to arrange that the feeble octogenarian should be brought to the Castle without fatigue, and enabled to appear both at the tenants' feast in the kitchen, and the more formal banquet of friends and neighbors in the hall—the grand old dining-room—which was arranged exactly as it had been on the earl's coming of age.

However, there was a difference. Then the board was almost empty, now it was quite full. With a carefulness that at the time Helen almost wondered at, the earl collected about him that day the most brilliant gathering he could invite from all the country round—people of family, rank, and wealth—above all, people of worth; who, either by inherited position, or that high character which is the best possession of all, could confer honor by their presence, and who, since "a man is known by his friends," would be suitable and creditable friends to a young man just entering the world.

And before all these, with Helen sitting as mistress at the foot of the table, and Helen's father at his right hand, the Earl of Cairnforth introduced, in a few simple words, his chosen heir.

"Deliberately chosen," he added; "not merely as being my cousin and my nearest of kin, but because he is his mother's son, and Mr. Cardross's grandson, and worthy of them both—also because, for his own sake, I respect him, and I love him. I give you the health of Alexander Cardross Bruce-Montgomerie."

And then they all wished the young man joy, and the dining-hall of Cairnforth Castle rang with hearty cheers for Mr. Bruce-Montgomerie.

No more speeches were made, for it was noticed that Lord Cairnforth looked excessively wearied; but he kept his place to the last. Of the many brilliant circles that he had entertained at his hospitable board, none were ever more brilliant than this; none gayer, with the genial, wholesome gayety which the earl, of whom it might truly be said,

"A merrier man, never spent an hour's talk withal,"

knew so well how to scatter around him. By what magic he did this, no one ever quite found out; but it was done, and especially so on this night of all nights, when, after his long absence, he came back to his own ancestral home, and appeared again among his own neighbors and friends. They long remembered it—and him.

At length the last carriage rolled away, and shortly afterward the wind began suddenly to rise and howl wildly round the Castle. There came on one of those wild winter-storms, common enough in these regions— brief, but fierce while they last.

"You can not go home," said the earl to Mrs. Bruce, who remained with him, the minister having departed with his son Duncan early in the evening. "Stay here till to-morrow. Cardross, persuade your mother. You never yet spent a night under my roof. Helen, will you do it his once? I shall never ask you again."

There was an earnest entreaty in his manner which Helen could not resist; and hardly knowing why she did it, she consented. Her son went off to his bed, fairly worn out with pleasurable excitement, and she staid with Lord Cairnforth, as he seemed to wish, for another half hour. They sat by the library fire, listening to the rain beating and the wind howling—not continuously, but coming and going in frantic blasts, which seemed like the voices of living creatures borne on its wings.

"Do you mind, Helen, it was just such a night as this when Mr. Menteith died, before I went to Edinburg? The sort of wind that, they say, is always sent to call away souls. I know not why it is, or why there should be any connection between things material and immaterial, comprehensible and wholly incomprehensible, but I often sit here and fancy I should like my soul to be called away in just such a tempest as this—to be set free,

"'And on the wings of mighty winds Go flying all abroad,'

"As the psalm has it. It would be glorious—glorious! Suddenly to find one's self strong, active—cumbered with no burden of a body— to be all spirit, and spirit only."

As the earl spoke, his whole face, withered and worn as it was, lighted up and glowed, Helen thought, almost like what one could imagine a disembodied soul.

She answered nothing, for she could find nothing to say. Her quiet, simple faith was almost frightened at the passionate intensity of his, and the nearness with which he seemed to realize the unseen world.

"I wonder," he said again—"I sometimes sit for hours wondering— what the other life is like—the life of which we know nothing, yet which may be so near to us all. I often find myself planning about it in a wild, vague way, what I am to do in it—what God will permit me to do—and to be. Surely something more than He ever permitted here."

"I believe that," said Helen. And after her habit of bringing all things to the one test and the one teaching, she reminded him of the parable of the talents: "I think," she added, "that you will be one of those whom, in requital for having made the most of all his gifts here, He will make 'ruler over ten cities' at least, if he is a just God."

"He is a just God. In my worst trials I have never doubted that," replied Lord Cairnforth, solemnly. And then he repeated those words of St. Paul, to which many an agonized doubter has clung, as being the last refuge of sorrow—the only key to mysteries which sometime shake the firmest faith—"'For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known.'"

When Helen rose to retire, which was not till midnight—for the earl seemed unwilling to let her go, saying it was so long since they had had a quiet talk together—he asked her earnestly if she were content about her son.

"Perfectly content. Not merely content, but happy—happier than I once thought it possible to be in this world. And it is you who have done it all—you who have made my boy what he is. But he will reward you—I know he will. Henceforward he will be as much your son as mine."

"I hope so. And now good-night, my dear."

"Good-night—God bless you."

Mrs. Bruce knelt down beside the chair, and touched with her lips the poor, useless hands.

"Helen," said the earl as she rose, "kiss me—just once—as I remember your doing when I was a boy—a poor, lonely, miserable boy."

She kissed him very tenderly, then went away and left him sitting there in his little chair, opposite the fire, alone in the large, splendid, empty room.

* * * * *

Helen Bruce could not sleep that night. Either the day's excitement had been too much for her, or she was disturbed by the wild winds that went shrieking round the Castle, reminding her over and over again of what the earl had just said concerning them. There came into her mind an uneasy feeling about her father, whom for so many years she had never left a night alone; but it was useless regretting this now. At last, toward morning, the storm gradually lulled. She rose, and looked out of her window on the loch, which glittered in moonlight like a sea of glass. It reminded her, with an involuntary fancy, of the sea "clear as glass, like unto crystal," spoken of in the fourth chapter of the Apocalypse as being "before the Throne." She stood looking at it for a minute or so, then went back to her bed and slept peacefully till daylight.

She was dressing herself, full of quiet and happy thoughts, admiring the rosy winter sunrise, and planning all she meant to do that day, when she was startled by Mrs. Campbell, who came suddenly into the room with a face as white and rigid as marble.

"He's awa'," she said, or rather whispered.

"Who's is away?" shrieked Helen, thinking at once of her father.

"Whisht!" said the old nurse, catching hold of Mrs. Bruce as she was rushing from the room, and speaking beneath her breath; "wisht! My lord's deid; but we'll no greet; I canna greet. He's gane awa' hame."

No, it was not the old man who was called. Mr. Cardross lived several years after then—lived to be nearly ninety. It was the far younger life—young, and yet how old in suffering!—which had thus suddenly and unexpectedly come to an end.

The earl was found dead in his bed, in his customary attitude of repose, just as Malcolm always placed him, and left him till the morning. His eyes were wide open, so that he could not have died in his sleep. But how, at what hour, or in what manner he had died—whether the summons had been slow or sudden, whether he had tried to call assistance and failed, or whether, calling no one and troubling no one, his fearless soul had passed, and chosen to pass thus solitary unto its God, none ever knew or ever could know, and it was all the same now.

He died as he had lived, quite alone. But it did not seem to have been a painful death, for the expression of his features was peaceful, and they had already settled down into that mysteriously beautiful death-smile which is never seen on any human face but once.

Helen stood and looked down upon it—the dear familiar face, now, in the grandeur of death, suddenly grown strange. She thought of what hey had been talking about last night concerning the world to come. Now he knew it all. She did not "greet;" she could not. In spite of its outward incompleteness, it had been a noble life—an almost perfect life; and now it was ended. He had had his desire; his poor helpless body cumbered him no more—he was "away."

* * * * *

It was a bright winter morning the day the Earl of Cairnforth was buried —clear hard frost, and a little snow—not much—snow never lies long on the shores of Loch Beg. There was no stately funeral, for it was found that he had left express orders to the contrary; but four of his own people, Malcolm Campbell and three more, took on their shoulders the small coffin, scarcely heavier than a child's, and bore it tenderly from Cairnforth Castle to Cainforth kirk-yard. After it came a long, long train of silent mourners, as is customary in Scotch funerals. Such a procession had not been witnessed for centuries in all this country-side. Ere they left the Castle the funeral prayer was offered up by Mr. Cardross, the last time the good old minister's voice was ever heard publicly in his own parish, and at the head of the coffin walked, as chief mourner, Cardross Bruce-Montgomerie, the earl's adopted son.

And so, laid beside his father and mother, they left him to his rest.

According to his own wish, his grave bears this inscription, carved upon a plain upright stone, which—also by his particular request— stands facing the Manse windows:

Charles Edward Stuart Montgomerie,

THE LAST EARL OF CAIRNFORTH,

Died——

Aged 43 Years.

"Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven."

THE END