"I AM leaving you alone in the world, Thomas, but I think you will do honestly and well. You have but two things to think of; yourself and your craft. Never demean yourself for an advantage in your craft, and never demean your craft for an advantage to yourself. That way you will succeed with the only success worth having." Such was the dying advice which young Thomas Cathro received from his father. Some days later, on his return from the kirkyard where he had laid to rest the remains of a parent whom he had both revered and loved, he sat down in the silent house and took account of his position. His years were twenty-one, and he was fairly master of the craft of clock-making. Under the wise guidance of his father, and aided by a naturally serious and well-balanced temperament of his own, he had employed the years of his apprenticeship so well as to have gained repute as a skilful and original workman. He did nothing by rote, but everything with wise consideration. His hand and mind were guided by a sense of fine poetry in adjusting his mechanism to solemnly measure out time; and ere the finished watch passed from his hands it had become a lovable thing from which he parted with regret. There was also a romantic strain in No. 437.-VOL. LXXIII.

his outlook on life, although only half acknowledged to himself. Therefore, before settling down in this little town in the midlands of Scotland, he was fain to go out into the world to see and study what the French and Swiss could do, and get some smack of wider existence and experience. The few hundreds of pounds his father had left him would suffice for his modest projects; and he justified them by the conviction that he would thereby extend his knowledge and mastery of the craft he loved. So inspired and resolved he proceeded to London, and, after a stay of about a year there, to Paris. In that city he worked out into practice a subtly-conceived improvement in the mechanism of watches, which he sold for a considerable sum of money to a famous house, remitting the proceeds to the Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh to be held in his name. With the fame of this achievement, and the greater possibilities it betokened, he next passed with high recommendations to Geneva. There he ingratiated himself by his curious admixture of modesty and knowledge. His strongly-marked features spoke of self-reliance; and in his eyes there seemed always lurking a gleam of suppressed wrath, which changed into a grave smile when he was spoken to. One day, while standing in the

Y

shop of the firm with whom for the time he had some connection, he was shown by the chief a note which had just been handed in. It contained a request for a careful and superior workman to be sent to examine an old clock which had suddenly stopped working. The signature to the note, entirely written in a feminine hand, was E. Dundas-Leblanc.

"There is something Scottish in the family; would you like to go?" asked the proprietor.

The house indicated was pleasantly situated on a slope about a mile from the town, and stood in its own grounds, which were attractively laid out in garden and terrace. On being admitted and shown up stairs, and thence by a somewhat long and narrow passage into a room furnished as if for no particular purpose, Thomas Cathro found himself in the presence of a young lady whose age he judged to be about his own. Foreign experience

had softened his Scottish stiffness without making him pliant, at least conventionally so. His manners were his own; simple, direct, and not assertive, but still the outcome of a distinct personality.

"I come from Monsieur Hartmann, mademoiselle."

"Yes. You are a careful workman?" she asked.

belonged to my mother who held it in great reverence. She gave it to me at her death, with particular injunctions not to tamper with it; to wind it regularly, and to keep it upright. It was to be moved as little as possible, and if anything went wrong, (although she thought it would go all my life as it had done during hers), I was to be present while it was being repaired. My mother's wishes are sacred," she continued; "and for the clock itself, I have now the same strange respect that she had."

Thomas listened gravely, and with such interested attention, that the young lady was won by his sympathy. She remarked he had a fine, strong face, full of gentle expressions.

He opened the panel-door, and touched the pendulum. "Oh," she cried, "it goes!"

"No," he answered, shaking his head with a grave smile, and looking at her, "that is the click of a dead clock."

"Dead?"

"For the present. Clocks have the advantage over us; they may stop beating-out time, and yet be made to resume. I must take it down. I will be careful." He repeated this without any smile, but rather with sympathetic assurance.

"You are not a Swiss?" she asked, having observed some defects in his French idiom.

"No. I am a Scot."

"Indeed!" she said. "I am half Scottish; my best half," she added, quickly and smilingly, in English.

"Well, never mind. My mother seemed superstitious about it. I; but I trust you now."

He

"Oh, but I will not harm it." paused in his work of detaching the movement after a little, and added: "This is a very old and finely made case. It is a careful work of art."

"Yes; I have heard her say all that. It had been in her family for very long."

"See," he said, pointing, "here is a motto carved beneath the movement on the case, Gang steady, gang lang. You know what that means?"

"Yes; but I did not know it was there."

"It was a true artist did that. He put it there out of mortal sight as a charm for the clock itself, as if it were a living thing to be reminded and take thought."

The girl gazed steadily back in his eyes as he watched hers for the effect of his remark. "Why are you a clockmaker?" she said.

"What better trade could I be of? Here is a fellow-workman speaking to me quite earnestly over the space of two hundred years. I can leave good work too for folks that come after."

"What is your name?" she asked simply.

"See here," he said, and she came close to look ; "there is the fault. Nothing is broken; only that pin has worn so thin that the wheel lies heavy on its centre, and stops the movement. If this clock were life, and that pin were hope, you might see how worn-out hope stops life."

"You are young to moralise."

"But I am not moralising," he said with a laugh. "If clockmaking were mere mechanics I should get weary of it."

"Never mind," she replied; "speak like that. My mother spoke like that."

"Your mother would be having a special liking for you?"

"Yes. I comforted her when she was sad."

"See

"And not so much for your sister?" He did not wait for a reply. here again," he continued, "round this wheel Quick make, quick break. This clock is alive; it is full of mind, that is, for me." He broke ecstatically into the Scottish tongue : "But I'll make ye a fine pin, my auld chap, an' ye sall gang anither hunder year."

"And whose possession will it be in then?" said the girl, moved also by his tone. "I will not have it live after me. Who will care for my mother then?"

"You speak as if your mother's soul was in the clock."

"No, no; not her soul, but something of her."

66 A clock-case is a fine abode for a gone spirit, none better. And if you loved your mother, and your mother loved the clock, it is no wonder if you hold tryst there."

"I never thought of it like that; yet it seems true."

I must take this

"True it is. wheel with me." "Oh," she said, "is that necessary?"

"Yes; the pin must be accurately fitted."

"But they are small things. I thought you could bring up a number and fit one here."

"I could do that," he answered, "if you thought the clock would like being treated in that way. I propose to make a special pin for it, by hand. It shall be my own work; something of me shall also go into the clock. would not be a matter of account or charges at all. I should like to do that."

It

"Oh, but your mother would trust

me."

"It is true," she answered. "When will you return?"

"The day after to-morrow at the same hour."

"Very well. Good-day, Mr. Cathro."

"Good-day, Miss Dundas."

She carefully locked the door of the room, then paused at the window in the corridor to watch him pass down the path and along the road. He was pleasant to look at, and she remained by the window in thought long after he was out of sight.

II.

Two days later, true to his promise Thomas Cathro returned to the house. The young lady received him as before, but with a warmer, kindlier manner. She was dressed with some attractive additions, yet still simply; and there was a deeper colour on her

cheek.

"I heard you ask for Miss Leblanc," she said, with a friendly smile of meaning.

"That was only of a servant," be answered.

"My sister," she continued,—“I told you of my sister-she saw you come up the path; she does not like you, your appearance; she says you have had no youth."

"True, true. We jump youth in Scotland, and begin to reflect early. She does not like that, you say? Then I don't like her. But I do not wish you to think my heart is not full of young things, Miss Dundas.”

She unlocked the door of the room where stood the clock and its works as they had left them. "How dead it looks," she said.

"Only suspended," he answered. "If I know anything of my trade you will find it go at once. Cathro's

pin will now outlast everything in the clock."

"You are sure it will go? I have not slept sound these two nights; I missed its familiar tick-tack."

"Ah, it was not only that; your mother's presence was also in suspense, although time is nothing to her. She inhabits here," he said, touching the clock, "where she can taste of its passing to you.”

"Does she see us, do you think?" asked the girl, touched to conviction by the sober mysticism of his remark. "See? No, not see; but she knows."

"Knows you also?"

Why not?" he answered, holding out the wheel with its newly-fitted pin. "There's a piece of me going into the ghostly bond now."

She sat down to watch him, observing with what care and reverence he handled the wheels with his long delicate fingers. "See how it fits," he said, as he fixed the new pin in its centre.

"I can scarcely believe it will go." "You shall see," he answered, turning home the last screws. "Look how the very back of the case, against the wall, is carved with an exquisite pattern, and the top also. There is no part but is decorated with skill and care, although in a place hidden from the eye. What a pang it must have given the man who made it to part with this clock, for money too. But who made it? I see no name or mark anywhere; a common place is that inner circle where the hands turn." He scanned it narrowly. "That brass boss is modern, put there by some ignorant man to keep out dust. Beneath it, no doubt, is the maker's name."

"Would you like to know?" she asked.

"A little," he answered.
"Remove it then, and look."

66

How many hours?"

"You can reckon from nine o'clock in the morning two days ago."

"Then it shall not have lost a minute of work for me." Saying this he wound up and exhausted the movement twice, and pulled the weights as much more as he judged would represent the odd hours, steadying the pendulum while he did so. "Now, Miss Dundas, 'tis you shall start it on another long task." Her hand trembled as she approached to touch the pendulum. Steady," he said,

66