Pamela took the hand that lay on the black silk lap and kissed it.  “Ah, my dear,” she said.

“Archie was my eldest son.  His father and I dreamed dreams about him.  They came true, though not in the way we would have chosen.  He went into the Indian Civil Service—­the Hopes were always a far-wandering race—­and he gave his life fighting famine in his district....  And Jock would be nothing but a soldier—­my Jock with his warm heart and his sudden rages and his passion for animals! (Jock Jardine reminds me of him just a little.) There never was anyone more lovable and he was killed in a Frontier raid—­two in a year.  Their father was gone, and for that I was, thankful; one can bear sorrow oneself, but it is terrible to see others suffer.  Augusta was a rock in a weary land to me; nobody knows what Augusta is but her mother.  We had Sandy, our baby, left, and we managed to go on.  But Sandy was a soldier too, and when the Boer War broke out, of course he had to go.  I knew when I said good-bye to him that whoever came back it wouldn’t be my laddie.  He was too shining-eyed, too much all that was young and innocent and brave to win through....  Archie and Jock were men, capable, well equipped to fight the world, but Sandy was our baby—­he was only twenty....  Of all the things the dead possessed it is the thought of their gentleness that breaks the heart.  You can think of their qualities of brain and heart and be proud, but when you think of their gentleness and their youth you can only weep and weep.  I think our hearts broke—­Augusta’s and mine—­when Sandy went....  He had been, they told us later, the life of his company.  His spirits never went down.  It was early morning, and he was singing ‘Annie Laurie’ when the bullet killed him—­like a lark shot down in the sun-rising....  His great friend came to see us when everything was over.  He was a very honest fellow, and couldn’t have made up things to tell us if he had tried.  He sat and racked his brains for details, for he saw that we hungered and thirsted for anything.  At last he said, ’Sandy was a funny fellow.  If you left a cake near him he ate all the currants out of it.’ ...  My little boy, my little, little boy!  I don’t know why I should cry.  We had him for twenty years.  Stir the fire, will you, Pamela, and put on a log—­I don’t like it when it gets dull.  Old people need a blaze even when the sun is outside.”

“You mustn’t say you are old,” Pamela said, as she threw on a log and swept the hearth, shading her eyes, smarting with tears, from the blaze.  “You must stay with Augusta for a long time.  Think how everyone would miss you.  Priorsford wouldn’t be Priorsford without you.”