He had never striven after this world’s good things, and they never came to him in any great measure; but better things did.  He always had enough, and a little to spare for those who had less.  In his old age this righteous man was not “forsaken,” and his seed never “begged their bread.”  His youngest, Duncan, was always beside him, and yearly his four other sons came to visit him from the various places where they had settled themselves, to labor, and prosper, and transmit honorably to another generation the honest name of Cardross.

For the minister’s “ae dochter,” she was, as she had been always, his right hand, watching him, tending him, helping and guarding him, expending her whole life for him, so as to make him feel as lightly as possible the gradual decay of his own; above all, loving him with a love that made labor easy and trouble light—­the passionately devoted love which we often see sons show to mothers, and daughters to fathers, when they have never had the parental ideal broke, nor been left to wander through life in a desolation which is only second to that of being “without God in the world.”

“I think he has a happy old age—­the dear old father!” said Helen one day, when she and Lord Cairnforth sat talking, while the minister was as usual absorbed in the library—­the great Cairnforth library, now becoming notable all over Scotland, of which Mr. Cardross had had the sole arrangement, and every book therein the earl declared he loved as dearly as he did his children.

“Yes, he is certainly happy.  And he has had a happy life, too—­more so than most people.”

“He deserved it.  All these seventy-five years he has kept truth on his lips, and honor and honesty in his heart.  He has told no man a lie; has overreached and deceived no man; and, though he was poor—­poor always; when he married my mother, exceedingly poor—­he has literally, from that day to this, ’owed no man any thing but to love one another.’  Oh!” cried Helen, looking after the old man in almost a passion of tenderness, “oh that my son may grow up like his grandfather!  Like nobody else—­only his grandfather.”

“I think he will,” answered Lord Cairnforth.

And, in truth, the accounts they had of young Cardross were for some time extremely satisfactory.  He had accommodated himself to his new life—­had taken kindly to his college work; gave no trouble to Mrs. Menteith, and still less to his uncle; the latter a highly respectable but not very interesting gentleman—­a partner in the firm of Menteith and Ross, and lately married to the youngest Miss Menteith.

Still, by his letters, the nephew did not seem overwhelmingly fond of him, complaining sometimes that Uncle Alick interfered with him a little too much; investigated his expenses, made him balance his accounts, and insisted that these should be kept within the limits suitable for Mrs. Bruce’s son and Mr. Cardross’s grandson, who would have to work his way in the world as his uncles had done before him.