The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

Willie Gillies. 135
both. My niece was a teacher for both Willie and me.
Her intuition into life, death, and immortality strengthened
the man of grey hairs and the lad newly entered upon the
responsibilities of life. I think there was a something, I
know not what, which made the communion of hearts
between Willie and Lucy closer when I listened to them
with shut eyes, appearing to be asleep, than when I joined
in the conversation. The heart of age gets encrusted with
a coating of insensibility—perhaps that was the cause.
Lucy was cheerful and uncomplaining through the winter.
We thought she was getting better daily, only the doctor
shook his head. When the: spring came, when birds began
to sing, and flowers to blossom, when it was hardest to part
with her, when amidst the revivification of life it was
saddest to die, she drooped her head and slept. I cannot
dwell on the scene. Her mother supported her head, I
held one hand and her father the other, and she cast on
Willie, who stood at the foot of the bed, a last look when
the final summons came. I felt exceedingly glad when the
season of my peregrmations called me from home that
year. I left Tommy in Willie's care, who had obtained
over the young scamp a powerful and salutary influence,
gee-geeh'd my regulation horse, and drove away from the
shadow of a great erief.
CHAPTER VL
I H-WE mentioned that Willie had an uncle. I knew
nothing about him but that he was rich and did not help in
the least his sister and her children. I set him down in m>
remembrance as a sordid brute, whose acquaintance was
not desirable, and never asked his name and whereabouts.
Nevertheless, it was destined that I should meet him in the
course of my summer travels the year Lucy died.
In the course of my official duty I entered a retired
pastoral parish on a Tuesday in yVugust. Considering the