SIX months at least--this is clearly not a story of the unities--six
months' interval must now elapse before the wedding-day. Charles and
Emmy--for he called her Emmy still, though Jeanie Mackie would persist
in mouthing it to "Aamy,"--wished to have it delayed a year, in respect
for the memory of those who, with all their crime and folly, were not
the less a mother and a brother: but the general would not hear of such
a thing; he was growing very old, he said; although actually he seemed
to have taken out a new lease of life, so young again and buoyant was
the new-found heart within him; and thus growing old, he was full of
fatherly fear that he should not live to see his children's happiness.
It was only reasonable and proper that our pair of cooing doves should
acquiesce in his desire.

Meanwhile, I am truly sorry to say it, Jeanie Mackie died; for it would
have been a good novel-like incident to have suffered the faithful old
creature to have witnessed her favourite's wedding, and then to have
been forthwith killed out of the way, by--perishing in the vestry.
However, things were ordered otherwise, and Jeanie Mackie did not live
to see the wedding: if you wish to know how and where she died, let me
tell you at once.

Scotland--Argyleshire--Glenmuir; this was the focus of her hopes and
thoughts--that poor old Indian exile! She had left it, as a buxom
bright-haired lassie: but oaks had now grown old that she had planted
acorns; and grandmothers had died palsied, whom she remembered born;
still, around the mountains and the lakes, those changeless features of
her girlhood's rugged home, the old woman's memory wandered; they were
pictured in her mind's eye hard, and clear, and definite as if she
looked upon them now. And her soul's deep hope was to see them once
again.