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Rh out her tears there, but she soon found out that plain Mrs. Lindsay, or Jessie with her kind tearful face, or Allan with his glistening blue eyes, were more sympathising friends and safer confidants than this handsome, well-dressed, ladylike woman, and she felt a shrinking repugnance to Mr. Hammond's reiterated proposal to take her home with him, if not to-night, at some early day.

After a quarter of an hour spent in a very constrained and uncomfortable manner in the chamber of death, Mrs. Hammond and her husband went again into the family sitting-room. Without apparently looking at anything, Mrs. Hammond's eye took in everything and everybody in the room, from the gaudy paper of the walls, and the tastelessly arranged common-looking ornaments on the chimney-piece, and the unharmonious colouring of curtains and carpet, to Jessie's freckles and Mrs. Lindsay's cap.

"Now, Mr. Hammond," said Hugh Lindsay, "I'm thinking there maun be an inquest the morn, and we'll have Dr. Burton's evidence as to the cause of his death. As for the funeral, will you have it at your place or at ours? or as it's like he belonged to your church, there will be a long journey before ye can get to what ye call consecrated ground. There's a bonnie bit of land at the end of the garden, where our Patrick is