"And, indeed, Davie, it was near at hand before the letter came. The Lord had touched him. First there was the fear of losing you, and then the fear of losing grannie, and then the letter came from the son he had lost so long, and that was the last touch for which the rest had made him ready. Oh! how good He has been to us! Surely, surely, Davie, we can never through all our lives forget."

Mrs Fleming thought as Katie did, though they had never spoken together of the subject. In her innermost heart she had believed--though even to herself she had hardly put the thought into words--that on the subject of Jacob Holt's past misdeeds her husband was hardly responsible for his thoughts. The misery of his son's loss, not for this brief life only, but forever and ever, as he could not but believe, had taken such full possession of him as to leave him no power to struggle against the bitterness which became almost hatred as time went on. If he had died unforgiving, the Lord would have still received him, she had believed, and she had striven to content herself with this belief in silence, feeling how vain were spoken words to him.

"Only a miracle would make him see G.o.d's will in this; and I have no right to ask for that."

No miracle was wrought. The letter came, and was the last touch of the loving Hand which even at the worst times had wounded but to heal; and lying with his lips in the dust, but with eyes looking upward, the cloud parted, and he saw the face of G.o.d, and was at peace.

After this there came nothing to trouble these two old people as they moved softly down the hill together. Grannie was never very strong again after her long illness, and no longer took the lead in all that was done in the house--that was Katie's part in life for several years to come; but she was quite content to rest and to look at other folk busy with the work which had once been hers, and that does not always happen in the last days of a life so active and so full as hers had been.

And what was true of the grandmother was true of the grandfather as well. He seemed to have no more anxious thoughts about anything. He did not need to have while Davie stayed at home; but even after Davie went away, and the management of the farm fell for the most part into the less skillful hands of the younger brothers, their grandfather "took things easy," the lads said, and rarely found fault.

And so they had still a peaceful gloaming, these two old people, when their changeful day of life was drawing to a close. Only it was like the dawn rather than the gloaming, Katie said, because of the soft brightness that shone on them both. It was "light at evening time," and their last days were their best to themselves and to all by whom they were beloved.

For the last days were days of waiting for the change of which they spoke often to the bairns so dear, and to one another. Once, as Katie sat with her grandfather at the pasture-bars on Sabbath afternoon, she said to him--after many other words had been spoken between them--that she would like to put that verse on his grave-stone after he was gone:

"At evening time it shall be light."

But her grandfather said:

"Na, na, my la.s.sie! If I have a grave-stone--which matters little--and if any verse at all be put upon it, let it be this:--

"'Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.'" Then Katie stooped and touched his hand with her lips, as she had done once long ago, and said softly: "Yes, grandfather, so it shall be." And so it was.

THE END.