“But it would be a comfort to you, surely, Stephen, to have him talk to you a little about the goodness and mercy of God.  He won’t tell you hard things, I’m sure of that.”

“No, I suppose he’ll try and make believe that death’s uncommon pleasant,” answered Mr. Whitelaw with a bitter laugh; “as if it could be pleasant to any man to leave such a place as Wyncomb, after doing as much for the land, and spending as much labour and money upon it, as I have done.  It’s like nurses telling children that a dose of physic’s pleasant; they wouldn’t like to have to take it themselves.”

And then by-and-by, when his last day had dawned, and he felt himself growing weaker, Mr. Whitelaw expressed himself willing to comply with his wife’s request.

“If it’s any satisfaction to you, Nell, I’ll see the parson,” he said.  “His talk can’t do me much harm, anyhow.”  Whereupon the rector of Crosber and Hallibury was sent for, and came swiftly to perform his duty to the dying man.  He was closeted with Mr. Whitelaw for some time, and did his best to awaken Christian feelings in the farmer’s breast; but it was doubtful if his pious efforts resulted in much.  The soul of Stephen Whitelaw was in his barns and granaries, with his pigs and cattle.  He could not so much as conceive the idea of a world in which there should be no such thing as sale and profit.

His end came quietly enough at last, and Ellen was free.  Her time of bondage had been very brief, yet she felt herself twenty years older than she had seemed before that interval of misery began.

When the will was read by Mr. Pivott on the day of Stephen Whitelaw’s funeral, it was found that the farmer had left his wife two hundred a year, derivable from real estate.  To Mrs. Rebecca Tadman, his cousin, he bequeathed an annuity of forty pounds, the said annuity to revert to Ellen upon Mrs. Tadman’s death should Ellen survive.  The remaining portion of his real estate he bequeathed to one John James Harris, a distant cousin, who owned a farm in Wiltshire, with whom Stephen Whitelaw had spent some years of his boyhood, and from whom he had learned the science of agriculture.  It was less from any love the testator bore John James Harris than from a morbid jealousy of his probable successor Frank Randall, that the Wiltshire farmer had been named as residuary legatee.  If Stephen Whitelaw could have left his real estate to the Infirmary, he would have so left it.  His personal estate, consisting of divers investments in railway shares and other kinds of stock, all of a very safe kind, was to be realized, and the entire proceeds devoted to the erection of an additional wing for the extension of Malsham Infirmary, and his gift was to be recorded on a stone tablet in a conspicuous position on the front of that building.  This, which was an absolute condition attached to the bequest, had been set forth with great minuteness by the lawyer, at the special desire of his client.