Chapter Two.

The Brother’s Sorrow.

George Dawson had been very successful in life. He was not an old man when he took possession of his estate of Saughleas. He had many years before him in which to enjoy the fruit of his labours, he told himself, and he exulted in the thought.

What happy years the first years there were! His children were good and bonny and strong; his wife was—not very strong—but oh! so sweet and dear! What lady among them all could compare with her, so good and true, so fair and stately, and yet so kindly and so well-beloved?

“I will grow a better man to deserve her better,” he said to himself with a vague presentiment of change upon him—a fear that such happiness could not last. For who was he, that he should have so much more than other men had? So he walked softly, and did justly, and dealt mercifully in many a case where he might have been severe with justice on his side, and strove honestly and wisely to make himself worthy of the woman who had been growing dearer day by day.

Growing dearer? Yes—but who was slipping away from him, slowly, but surely, day by day. He strove to shut his eyes to that which others clearly saw, but deep down in his heart was the certain knowledge that he must lose her. But not yet. Not for a long time yet. With care in a warmer climate, under sunnier skies, she might live for years yet—many years. So he set himself to the task of so arranging his affairs, that he might take her away for the winter at least, away from the bleak sea winds to one of the many places where he had heard that health and healing had come to many a one far more ill than she was.

And if he could have got her away in time, who knows but so it might have been. But illness came in amongst the children, and she would not leave them even to the wise and loving care of their aunt; and when first one, and then another little life went out, her husband could see with a sinking heart, that she longed to follow where they had gone.

When the other children grew better he took her away for a little while. But the drawing of those little graves, and the longing to die at home among those who were still left, brought them back to Saughleas—only just in time. He did not lay her in the bleak kirkyard of Portie. He could not do it. It was a foolish thing to do, it was said, but in the quietest, bonniest spot in Saughleas, in a little wood that lay in sight of the house, he laid her down, when he could keep her no longer, and by and by he lifted her bonny little bairns and laid them down beside her. And then it seemed for a while that to him life was ended.

But life was not ended. He had more to do, and more to suffer yet, and indeed had to become a changed man altogether before he could be ready and worthy to look again upon the face that he so longed to see.

Oh, the length of the days! the weariness of all things! He used to wonder at the sickness that lay heavy on his heart all day—at the anguish that made the night terrible to him. He was growing an old man, he said to himself, and he had thought it was only the young who strove and suffered, and could not yield themselves to the misery of loss and pain. But then—who, old or young, of all the men he had ever known, had lost what he had lost? No wonder that he suffered and could find no comfort.

“Ay! No wonder that you suffer,” said his sister to him once. “But take tent lest ye add rebellion to the sin of overmuch sorrow. Have you ever truly submitted to God’s will all your life, think ye, George, man? Things had mostly gone well and easily with ye. But now this has come upon you, and take ye thought of it. For ye’re no’ out of God’s hand yet, and ‘whom He loveth He chasteneth.’”

She did not speak often to him, but he heard her and made no answer. That was Jean’s way of looking at things, he thought; and because she had had sore troubles of her own, he did not answer her roughly, as he felt inclined to do. There was nothing to be said.

He sent his two daughters away to be educated, first to Edinburgh and afterwards to London, and after that, the house of Saughleas, except a room or two, was shut up for a time. The father and son left it early and returned to it late, and the father spent his days in working as hard as ever he had done in the days when he was making his own way in the world. The winter was hard to bear, but the coming of the spring-time was even worse. Every bonny flower looked up at him with the eyes of her he had lost; every bird, and breeze, and trembling leaf spoke to him with her voice. The sunlight lying on her grave, the still, soft air, the sweetness of the season,—all brought back on him like a flood, the longing for her presence; and he must have gone away or broken down altogether, if it had not been for his son George, his only son.

He was a handsome, kindly lad, more like his mother than any of his bairns, and dearer than any of them to his father, because he was her firstborn. George had mourned his mother deeply and truly, but her name had never been spoken between them till on one of the first sunny days of spring, the father found the son lying on his face among the long withered grass that covered her grave. Sitting there then, lips and hearts were opened to each other, and it was never so bad to either after that.

By and by hope sprang up in the father’s heart, in the presence of the son who was so like his mother, and so the weight of his heavy sorrow was lightened.

But there were folk in Portie, and his sister Jean was one of them, who doubted whether the father was doing the best that could be done for his son. He held a situation in the Portie Bank, and his father’s intention was, that he should there, and elsewhere, when the right time came, acquire such a