grandson, aged six years, repeated to him. "Lockhart," he said to his
son-in-law, "I have but a minute to speak to you. My dear, be a good
man; be virtuous, be religious, be a good man. Nothing else will give
you any comfort when you come to lie here."

So passed the great author of "Waverley" away. And when, in due course,
his executors came to search for his testament, and lifted up his desk,
"we found," says one of them, "arranged in careful order a series of
little objects, which had obviously been so placed there that his eye
might rest on them every morning before he began his tasks." There were
the old-fashioned boxes that had garnished his mother's toilet-table
when he, a sickly child, slept in her dressing-room; the silver
taper-stand which the young advocate bought for her with his first fee;
a row of small packets inscribed by her hand, and containing the hair of
such of her children as had died before her; and more odds and ends of a
like sort--pathetic tokens of a love which bound together for a little
while here on earth, and binds together for evermore in heaven,
Christian mother and son.

Sir Walter of the land
Of song and old romance,
Tradition in his cunning hand
Obedient as the lance

His valiant Black Knight bore,
Wove into literature
The legend, myth, and homely lore
Which now for us endure,

To charm our weary hours,