We are placed in a most painful and responsible position--both Dr.Hamilton and myself." It was now Mr.Cardross's turn to look perplexed.

No doubt it was a most sad fatality which had happened, but still things did not seem to warrant the excessive anxiety testified by Mr.Menteith.
"I do not quite comprehend you.

There might have been difficulties as to the succession, but are they not all solved by the birth of a healthy, living heir--whom we must cordially hope will long continue to live ?" "I hardly know if we ought to hope it," said the lawyer, very seriously.
"But we must 'keep a calm sough' on that matter for the present--so far, at least, Dr.Hamilton and I have determined--in order to prevent the Bruces from getting wind of it.

Now, then, will you come and see the earl ?" "The earl!" re-echoed Mr.Cardross, with a start; then recollected himself, and sighed to think how one goes and another comes, and all the world moves on as before--passing, generation after generation, into the awful shadow which no eye except that of faith can penetrate.

Life is a little, little day--hardly longer, in the end, for the man in his prime than for the infant of an hour's span.
And the minister, who was of meditative mood, thought to himself much as a poet half a century later put into words--thoughts common to all men, but which only such a man and such a poet could have crystallized into four such perfect lines: "Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die, And Thou hast made him--Thou are just." Thus musing, Mr.Cardross followed up stairs toward the magnificent nursery, which had been prepared months before, with a loving eagerness of anticipation, and a merciful blindness to futurity, for the expected heir of the Earls of Cairnforth.