NOBODY, after that day, ever heard Mr Blair mention his wife's name. A little picture of her in crayon, which had been painted when she was a very young girl, had hitherto hung over the mantle-piece in the parlour, but it was now removed into the room where he slept, and placed opposite to the foot of his bed. The most of her books were taken from the room in which she died, and arranged in the same apartment; and after all this had been done, he was never known to enter that fatal chamber. For some time before Mrs Blair's death, the duty of teaching young Sarah to read and write had devolved upon him—and in this duty he continued to exert himself. After dinner, the child seldom left the room in which he sat, till it was time for her to retire to rest. He read to her, he talked to her, he listened to all her little stories, and took a part in all her little occupations. But though he had been used to take much delight in hearing her sing before, he was never heard now to bid her try either The bonnie wee crowden doo, or Bird Marjory, or The Earl of Bothwell's wife, or any other of the favourite ballads of that part of the country. Sometimes, indeed, when the girl was singing to herself in her chamber, he would stand listening to her for a few seconds behind the door, but she never knew herself to be singing in her father's hearing, unless when she joined her voice close beside his knee in the domestic psalmody. The servants remarked all this, and said it was no wonder, for little Sarah's singing put one very much in mind of her mother, when she used to be merry, in the first years of her marriage, by the fire-side.

Some of those, however, who had less opportunity of understanding the character and feelings of the man, were sufficiently inclined to put quite another sort of construction on many parts of Mr Blair's conduct and demeanour the winter after this calamity befell him. There are such a number of people in the world who cannot conceive of affliction apart from the images of white handkerchiefs, long weepers, and black sealing-wax, that it is no great wonder this should have been so.