The two gentlemen sat down together.  They had often met before, for whenever there were guests at Cairnforth Castle the earl always invited the minister and his wife to dinner, but they had never fraternized much.  Now, a common sympathy, nay, more, a common grief—­for something beyond sympathy, keen personal regret, was evidently felt by both for the departed earl and countess—­made them suddenly familiar.

“Is the child doing well?” was Mr. Cardross’s first and most natural question; but it seemed to puzzle Mr. Menteith exceedingly.

“I suppose so—­indeed, I can hardly say.  This is a most difficult and painful matter.”

“It was born alive, and is a son and heir, as I heard?”

“Yes.”

“That is fortunate.”

“For some things; since, had it been a girl, the title would have lapsed, and the long line of Earls of Cairnforth ended.  At one time Dr. Hamilton feared the child would be stillborn, and then, of course, the earldom would have been extinct.  The property must in that case have passed to the earl’s distant cousins, the Bruces, of whom you may have heard, Mr. Cardross?”

“I have; and there are few things, I fancy, which Lord Cairnforth would have regretted more than such heir-ship.”

“You are right,” said the keen W.S., evidently relieved.  “It was my instinctive conviction that you were in the late earl’s confidence on this point, which made me decide to send and consult with you.  We must take all precautions, you see.  We are placed in a most painful and responsible position—­both Dr. Hamilton and myself.”

It was now Mr. Cardross’s turn to look perplexed.  No doubt it was a most sad fatality which had happened, but still things did not seem to warrant the excessive anxiety testified by Mr. Menteith.

“I do not quite comprehend you.  There might have been difficulties as to the succession, but are they not all solved by the birth of a healthy, living heir—­whom we must cordially hope will long continue to live?”

“I hardly know if we ought to hope it,” said the lawyer, very seriously.  “But we must ‘keep a calm sough’ on that matter for the present—­so far, at least, Dr. Hamilton and I have determined—­in order to prevent the Bruces from getting wind of it.  Now, then, will you come and see the earl?”

“The earl!” re-echoed Mr. Cardross, with a start; then recollected himself, and sighed to think how one goes and another comes, and all the world moves on as before—­passing, generation after generation, into the awful shadow which no eye except that of faith can penetrate.  Life is a little, little day—­hardly longer, in the end, for the man in his prime than for the infant of an hour’s span.

And the minister, who was of meditative mood, thought to himself much as a poet half a century later put into words—­thoughts common to all men, but which only such a man and such a poet could have crystallized into four such perfect lines: