468 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



respected for her intellect, honoured for her character, 

 before he loved her ; and when he did love her, it was 

 with the intense and passionate devotion of a strong 

 man, who never loved woman but one. Had he never 

 loved her, he might never have laid down the mallet 

 and the chisel, or quitted Cromarty. They had known 

 fair and foul weather in their wedded life, but on the 

 whole it has been a fitting sequel to those old days 

 when his ' gentle blue eyes ' would ' melt with be- 

 nevolence and a chastened tenderness/ looking into 

 hers, while the green leaves softened the sunlight 

 above, and the summer wave threw its shattering crystal 

 at their feet. His trust and pride in her had never 

 changed, and she held to the last the throne of his 

 affections, supreme and apart from any other human 

 being. On this Sunday afternoon he was in his most 

 tender and confidential, which was always also his re- 

 ligious, mood. No secular matters were spoken of, but 

 in what he said on spiritual things Mrs Miller observed, 

 what she had recently noticed in his prayers at family 

 worship, ' an increasing earnestness, a child-like hu- 

 mility, a more entire reliance upon the merits of the 

 Saviour to blot out all sin, a more awful sense of 

 God's immediate presence/ His affection was so ardent 

 that Mrs Miller regarded it with something of sur- 

 prise. He suddenly seized her hand, and kissed it with 

 a manner she had never seen before. ' There was 

 in it a great deal more than affection, an air of court- 

 liness, so to speak, indescribable.' In pondering on 

 this action, Mrs Miller has asked whether it could pos- 

 sibly have had the meaning of a farewell. Comparing it 

 with the strange and painful expression which flitted 

 across his countenance as they came from church, she is 

 persuaded that he was haunted by the dread of some 



