It was a dreary wintry summer to all at Howglen. Why should the ripe
corn wave deep-dyed in the gold of the sunbeams, when Alec lay frozen
in the fields of ice, or sweeping about under them like a broken
sea-weed in the waters so cold, so mournful? Yet the work of the world
must go on. The corn must be reaped. Things must be bought and sold.
Even the mourners must eat and drink. The stains which the day had
gathered must be washed from the brow of the morning; and the dust to
which Alec had gone down must be swept from the chair in which he had
been wont to sit. So things did go on???-of themselves as it were, for no
one cared much about them, although it was the finest harvest that year
that Howglen had ever borne. It had begun at length to appear that the
old labour had not been cast into a dead grave, but into a living soil,
like that of which Sir Philip Sidney says in his sixty-fifth psalm:
"Each clodd relenteth at thy dressing,"
as if it were a human soul that had bethought itself and began to bring
forth fruit.???-This might be the beginning of good things. But what did
it matter?
Annie grew paler, but relaxed not a single effort to fill her place.
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