James Boyn McCombie, an uncle of Major Ewing, who always showed a most
kind and helpful interest in my sister's literary work.

He died a few weeks before she did, much to her sorrow, but the
Dedication remained when the story came out in a separate form,
illustrated by Mr. Caldecott. The incident which makes the tale
specially appropriate to be dedicated to so true and unobtrusive a
philanthropist as Mr. McCombie was known to be, is the Highlander's
burning anxiety to rescue John Broom from his vagrant career.

"Lob" contains some of Julie's brightest flashes of humour, and ends
happily, but in it, as in many of her tales, "the dusky strand of
death" appears, inwoven with, and thereby heightening, the joys of
love and life. It is a curious fact that, though her power of
describing death-bed scenes was so vivid, I believe she never saw any
one die; and I will venture to say that her description of McAlister's
last hours surpasses in truth and power the end of Leonard's "Short
Life"; the extinction of the line of "Old Standards" in Daddy Darwin;
the unseen call that led Jan's Schoolmaster away; and will even bear
comparison with Jackanapes' departure through the Grave to that "other
side" where "the Trumpets sounded for him."

In order to appreciate the end, it is almost necessary, perhaps, to
have followed John Broom, the ne'er-do-weel lad, and McAlister, the
finest man in his regiment, through the scenes which drew them
together, and to read how the soldier, who might and ought to have
been a "sairgent," tried to turn the boy back from pursuing the
downward path along which he himself had taken too many steps; and
then learn how the vagrant's grateful love and agility enabled him to
awaken the sleeping sentinel at his post, and save "the old soldier's