“Ah! it’s like another world!” said the old woman, shaking her head slowly.  “All the folks I used to sew for at Aston, and Uppington, and Overlehill, they’d mostly be gone or dead by now.  It wouldn’t seem like the same place at all.  And now there’s none but you and me left, brother James.  Well, well! its lonesome, growing old.”

“Yes, lonesome, yet not exactly lonesome,” replied old Oliver, in a dreamy voice.  “I’m growing dark a little, and just a trifle deaf, and I don’t feel quite myself like I used to do; but I’ve got something I didn’t use to have.  Sometimes of an evening, before I’ve lit the gas, I’ve a sort of a feeling as if I could almost see the Lord Jesus, and hear him talking to me.  He looks to me something like our eldest brother, him that died when we were little.  Charlotte, thee remembers him?  A white, quiet, patient face, with a smile like the sun shining behind clouds.  Well, whether it’s only a dream or no I cannot tell, but there’s a face looks at me, or seems to look at me out of the dusk; and I think to myself, maybe the Lord Jesus says, ’Old Oliver’s lonesome down there in the dark, and his eyes growing dim.  I’ll make myself half-plain to him.’  Then he comes and sits here with me for a little while.”

“Oh, that’s all fancy as comes with you living quite alone,” said Charlotte, sharply.

“Perhaps so! perhaps so!” answered the old man, with a meek sigh; “but I should be very lonesome without that.”

They did not speak again until Charlotte had given a final shake to the bed in the corner, upon which her bonnet and shawl had been lying.  She put them on neatly and primly; and when she was ready to go she spoke again in a constrained and mysterious manner.

“Heard nothing of Susan, I suppose?” she said.

“Not a word,” answered old Oliver, sadly.  “It’s the only trouble I’ve got.  That were the last passion I ever went into, and I was hot and hasty, I know.”

“So you always used to be at times,” said his sister.

“Ah! but that passion was the worst of all,” he went on, speaking slowly.  “I told her if she married young Raleigh, she should never darken my doors again—­never again.  And she took me at my word though she might have known it was nothing but father’s hot temper.  Darken my doors!  Why, the brightest sunshine I could have ’ud be to see her come smiling into my shop, like she used to do at home.”

“Well, I think Susan ought to have humbled herself,” said Charlotte.  “It’s going on for six years now, and she’s had time enough to see her folly.  Do you know where she is?”

“I know nothing about her,” he answered, shaking his head sorrowfully.  “Young Raleigh was wild, very wild, and that was my objection to him; but I didn’t mean Susan to take me at my word.  I shouldn’t speak so hasty and hot now.”

“And to think.  I’d helped to bring her up so genteel, and with such pretty manners!” cried the old woman, indignantly.  “She might have done so much better with her cleverness too.  Such a milliner as she might have turned out!  Well good-bye, brother James, and don’t go having any more of those visions; they’re not wholesome for you.”