Peter Sinclair’s house being one of the largest in Kirkwall, was a favorite gathering place, and Peter took his full share in all the home-like, innocent amusements which beguiled the long, dreary nights.  No one in Orkney or Zetland could recite Ossian with more passion and tenderness, and he enjoyed his little triumph over the youngsters who emulated him.  No one could sing a Scotch song with more humor, and few of the lads and lassies could match Peter in a blithe foursome reel or a rattling strathspey.  Some, indeed, thought that good Dr. Ogilvie had a more graceful spring and a longer breath, but Peter always insisted that his inferiority to the minister was a voluntary concession to the Dominie’s superior dignity.  It was, however, a rivalry that always ended in a firmer grip at parting.  These little festivals, in which young and old freely mingled, cultivated to perfection the best and kindest feelings of both classes.  Age mellowed to perfect sweetness in the sunshine of youthful gayety, and youth learned from age how at once to be merry and wise.

At length June arrived; and though winter lingered in spates, the song of the skylark and the thrush heralded the spring.  When the dream-like voice of the cuckoo should be heard once more, Peter and Margaret had determined to take a long summer trip.  They were to go first to Perth, where Captain Thorkald was stationed, and then to Glasgow and see Ronald.  But God had planned another journey for Peter, even one to a “land very far off.”  A disease, to which he had been subject at intervals for many years, suddenly assumed a fatal character and Peter needed no one to tell him that his days were numbered.

He set his house in order, and then, going with Margaret to his summer dwelling, waited quietly.  He said little on the subject, and as long as he was able, gave himself up with the delight of a child to watching the few flowers in his garden; but still one solemn, waylaying thought made these few last weeks of life peculiarly hushed and sacred.  Ronald had been sent for, and the old man, with the clear prescience that sometimes comes before death, divined much and foresaw much he did not care to speak about—­only that in some subtle way he made Margaret perceive that Ronald was to be cared for and watched over, and that to her this charge was committed.

Before the summer was quite over Peter Sinclair went away.  In his tarrying by the eternal shore he became, as it were, purified of the body, and one lovely night, when gloaming and dawning mingled, and the lark was thrilling the midnight skies, he heard the Master call him, and promptly answered, “Here am I.”  Then “Death, with sweet enlargement, did dismiss him hence.”