“Sorrow’s an unwelcome guest, whether it comes expected, or without any previous knowledge.  The hairts o the widow and fairtherless must be stricken, and it’s little that a’ our consolations and expairiments will prevail ag’in the feelin’s o’ natur’.  Pheeloosophy and religion tall us that the body’s no mair than a clod o’ the valley when the speerit has fled; but the hairt is unapt to listen to wisdom while the grief is fraish, and of the severity of an unlooked-for sairtainty. I see little good, therefore, in doing mair than just sending in a messenger, to clear the way a little for the arrival of truth, in the form o’ death, itsal’.”

“I have been thinking of this—­will you take the office, Jamie, as a man of years and discretion?”

“Na—­na—­ye’ll be doing far better by sending a younger man.  Age has weakened my memory, and I’ll be overlooking some o’ the saircumstances in a manner that will be unseemly for the occasion.  Here is Blodget, a youth of ready wit, and limber tongue.”

“I wouldn’t do it, mason, to be the owner of ten such properties as this!” exclaimed the young Rhode Islander, actually recoiling a step, as if he retreated before a dreaded foe.

“Well, sairjeant, ye’ve Michael here, who belangs to a kirk that has so little seempathy with protestantism as to lessen the pain o’ the office.  Death is a near ally to religion, and Michael, by taking a religious view o’ the maither, might bring his hairt into such a condition of insensibility as wad give him little to do but to tell what has happened, leaving God, in his ain maircy, to temper the wind to the shorn lamb.”

“You hear, O’Hearn?” said the serjeant, stiffly—­“Everybody seems to expect that you will do this duty.”

“Jewty!—­D ’ye call it a jewty for a man in my situation to break the hearts of Missus, and Miss Beuly, and phratty Miss Maud, and the babby? for babbies has hearts as well as the stoutest man as is going.  Divil bur-r-n me, then, if ye gets out of my mout’ so much as a hint that the captain’s dead and gone from us, for ever and ever, amen!  Ye may send me in, for ye ’re corporals, and serjeants, and the likes of yees, and I’ll obey as a souldier, seem’ that he would have wished as much himself, had the breat’ staid in his body, which it has not, on account of its l’aving his sowl on ’arth, and departing with his corporeal part for the mansions of happiness, the Blessed Mary have mercy on him, whether here or there—­but the captain was not the man to wish a fait’ful follower to afflict his own wife; and so I’ll have not’in’ to do with such a message, at all at all.”

“Nick go”—­said the Indian, calmly—­“Used to carry message—­carry him for cap’in, once more.”

“Well, Nick, you may do it certainly, if so disposed,” answered Joyce, who would have accepted the services of a Chinese rather than undertake the office in person.  “You will remember and speak to the ladies gently, and not break the news too suddenly.”