. 
They drew nigh softly, and bent over the withered, but not 
even yet very wrinkled face. The smooth, white, soft hands 
lay on the sheet, which was folded back over her bosom. She 
was asleep, or, rather, she slumbered.- 

But the  of the child began to grow in the withered  
of the old man as he regarded his older mother, and as it grew 
it forced the tears to his eyes, and the word to his lips. 

"Mother!" he said, and her eyelids rose at once. He 
stooped to kiss her, with the tears rolling down his face. The 
light of heaven broke and flashed from her aged countenance. 
She lifted her weak hands, took his head, and held it to her 
bosom. 

"Eh! the bonnie gray held!" she said, and burst into a 
-wordnetdesire of weeping. She had kept some tears "^for the last. 
Now she would spend all that her  had left her. But 
there came a pause in her sobs, though not in her weeping, 
and then she spoke :  

"I knew it a' the time, Lord. I knew it a' the time. 
He's come hame. My Andrew, my Andrew ! I'm as happy's